INTRODUCTION
In a small town in Tunisia, Mohammed Bouazizi, a young fruit seller, was angered and humiliated by a bureaucratic inspector who slapped his face and confiscated his apples. He poured paint thinner on his body and lit himself on fire. He died in January 2011. His story roused the sympathetic indignation of a generation of Tunisian youth. They saw themselves in him—lacking opportunities and doing their best to make do, subject to the petty whims of bureaucrats who could assault them and take away their livelihood with impunity.1 And then that rage spread elsewhere around the Middle East, with citizens both demonstrating peacefully and violently overthrowing governments. The peoples of the region wanted something more than to eke out an existence amid stagnation and repression. A new generation revealed its frustration with the established order’s corruption, patronage, authoritarianism, and failed governance.
These events were optimistically termed the “Arab Spring.” The inspirational movements of the Arab Spring captured global imagination for what might be. Arab Spring movements demanded a better way of life and new models for societies that were not realizing their potential. But the aftermath has ranged from tentatively encouraging to halting processes for change to devastating civil wars that have resulted in challenges to the very borders of the Middle East and mass refugee crises.
What are we to make of the disparate and tumultuous events in this part of the world? What was the Arab Spring about? What was accomplished? What trends are shaping the Middle East after the Arab Spring?
I sought answers to these questions. And so I set out on a journey through six countries of the Middle East (not all of which are Arab countries) with varying roles in and experiences of the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar, and Egypt. This book is a narrative of that journey. I visited historical sites and delved into scholarship on the region. I conducted interviews with key figures in the protests and revolutions, government officials, media leaders, and people who lived through important events of the Arab Spring. To show multiple points of view, I spoke with people who vehemently disagreed with each other. It was a privilege to have had the opportunity to talk with people who played such roles, took great personal risks, and exhibited courage and creativity. I hope to capture some of that spirit in this book.
I chose the six countries in this book to illustrate the region’s diversity and a variety of Arab Spring experiences. These experiences include government overthrows, peaceful protests and incremental change, interfering in other countries’ Arab Springs, or being impacted by the Arab Spring. Among the six, there are stable countries, unstable countries, rich countries, poor countries, democracies, autocracies, and monarchies. The people in this book are of multiple ethnicities, including Arabs as well as Turks, Kurds, Berbers, and others. There are people who speak different languages and practice religion in different ways.
The journey of this book begins in Tunisia, the country where the Arab Spring revolutions started, and where there emerged a model of a positive, sustainable, and inclusive, albeit fragile, way forward. Next, although it isn’t an Arab country, Turkey’s protest movements challenged growing government autocracy, and the history of the fall of the Ottoman Empire provides historical context for understanding conflicts in the region today. I move then to neighboring Iraq. There, I traveled in the Kurdistan Region. While Iraq did not have a significant Arab Spring movement (although there were some protests), it was affected by the Arab Spring and was also an important part of the Arab Spring context. The Kurdistan Region underwent a “spring” of investment in development, after the American war in Iraq and before threats by the Islamic State,2 itself a perverse outgrowth of Arab Spring desires for new forms of government. Qatar is next, a country of contradictory activities. While Qatar has made efforts domestically to build a cosmopolitan knowledge-based economy, it has been involved in other countries’ Arab Springs through reporting by Al Jazeera, backing of Islamist political parties in other countries, and funding violent factions in Libya and Syria. The story continues with Jordan, a middle-income country that made strides in development despite its tough neighborhood. Jordan’s Arab Spring protesters made demands for incremental economic and political reforms (not government overthrow), and the government responded with incremental change. Finally, Egypt is home to a quarter of the Arab world. Its dramatic 2011 revolution overthrew a man who had ruled for thirty years, followed by the democratic election of a Muslim Brotherhood politician, mass protests over his abuses of power, and finally his overthrow by the military. While Egypt’s revolution is viewed as a disappointing failure that ushered in an even more repressive regime, the reality is more complex. Profound changes have begun in Egypt’s social fabric. Finally, many of these countries have in some way been affected by the violent civil wars elsewhere in the region that were set off by the Arab Spring, whether through absorbing refugees, having their own stability threatened, or witnessing examples to avoid.
Writing this book has been an act of both love and frustration for me. It is written out of love for a region that delights with its friendships, aesthetics, heritage, adventures, and professional opportunities. It is written out of frustration with the destruction of people and places, mindsets that no longer serve the people there, and a squandering of human aspirations and ability through corrupt and inept governance.
I have lived, studied, worked, or traveled in the Middle East extensively, first as a student lured by the potential for adventure and by rich and ancient history. I have been coming back ever since. The region has been a formative part of my life and world outlook. For ten years, I worked at the RAND Corporation on the Middle East. This included living in Qatar for seven years advising on education and innovation policy, developing K–12 education plans for the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq five years, and analyzing public services for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. I worked on the Turkey desk at the U.S. State Department, lived in Egypt to study Arabic, and studied in Morocco and Israel for short periods. And I have spent a considerable amount of time meandering through the bazaars, mosques, and museums housing great works of art and heritage of almost every other country in the region. I have met with and briefed national leaders on a wide range of issues, from education to entrepreneurship, backpacked on a budget of ten dollars per night, smoked apple tobacco in a water pipe with friends over music, learned to belly dance, and been accused of being a CIA agent. It is from this perspective that this book looks at the changes under way in the Middle East.
The Middle East of today is in the news more often for its problems than its accomplishments. Societies that once contributed so much to the development of human civilization face myriad complex problems now, including economic stagnation, dysfunctional public services, and violent interethnic and religious conflict. However, there is much more to the Middle East than terror, violent upheavals, and disappointments. The nearly 500 million people who live there are rich with aspirations and accomplishments as well. A one-sided intake of information about problems in the Middle East obscures this complexity and handicaps us in our ability to understand the forces shaping the region and deal with its challenges. A one-sided understanding can lead to disastrous or inept policies. Here are six observations about the Middle East, explored in the journey for this book, that cast light on the future of a region undergoing transformation.
1. The Middle East Is Not Monolithic
What we call the Middle East spans three continents—Europe, Africa, and Asia—and contains the diversity that results. It is all called “the Middle East” or “the Arab world” as if it were one place, with one people, one culture, and one set of problems. Even this book is structured around that idea. Certainly there are commonalities, such as Islam, the Arabic language, and a shared regional history. But countries in the Middle East are distinct, the same way that Europe is vastly varied, as London differs from Kosovo, as the arid island of Sicily differs from the fjords of Sweden, and as the German economic powerhouse differs from the collapsed economy of Greece.
Consider economies. There is a Middle East of innovation and investment and a Middle East of stagnation, wasted opportunities, and squandered capabilities. Dubai has established itself as an international financial center. Jordan is a regional center of entrepreneurship. On the other hand, 12 to 16 million Egyptians live in slums.3 Qataris now rank as the richest people in the world. Qatar’s GDP per capita is $140,000, while in contrast Yemen has a GDP per capita of $4,000.4
Consider stability. There is the Middle East of turmoil and the Middle East of new beginnings. Some countries are mired in conflicts that likely won’t be resolved for decades to come, splintering along ethnic and religious lines (Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria) with mass displacements of people because of violence. People in other countries enjoy a more tranquil life. For example, Morocco has been ranked as having the best quality of life in Africa, even ahead of South Africa.5 The United Arab Emirates and Qatar boast comfortable infrastructure, a cosmopolitan atmosphere, and professional opportunities.
Consider culture. Some countries are more culturally open, while others are very conservative. You can enjoy sophisticated nightlife, bars, and clubs in Beirut, while Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam mandates separation of genders in social life and prohibits women from driving.
Consider language. In theory, people in Arab countries speak Arabic. But nobody actually speaks Modern Standard Arabic as a native language. They speak different dialects descended from Arabic and mixed with other regional languages; some of the dialects are far enough apart as to be mutually incomprehensible. Many Arabs do not have a solid mastery of Modern Standard Arabic. The less educated may struggle to understand it, and Arab elites may be more confident in English or French. Minorities speak Kurdish (in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran), Amazigh (also called Berber, in parts of North Africa, including in Tunisia), and other languages. Although they are considered countries of the Middle East, Turkey’s and Iran’s national languages are Turkish and Farsi, not Arabic.
Consider identity. Middle Eastern countries contain Muslims, Christians, and Jews, and among Muslims, there are varying branches, the most noteworthy of which are Sunnis and Shiites. There are people of diverse ethnicities—Arabs, Kurds, Persians, Amazighs, Turks, Assyrians, Copts, Yazidis, and more. Therefore, there are multiple identities. For many people in the Middle East, “Arab” is not the primary identity.
2. The Fall of the Ottoman Empire Provides Insight into Today’s Conflicts
A century ago, most of the Middle East was one political entity, the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Istanbul.6 The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest, most powerful, and longest-lasting empires in history. At its height, it ruled territories that circle the east and south of the Mediterranean and beyond. Its former territory encompassed all or part of what are today more than fifty countries. It was also seat to the last Islamic caliphate and included the holy cities of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
The defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I (preceded by decades of weakness) precipitated the birth of the modern nation-states that splintered off in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans. Allied victors carved up the once mighty but ailing empire into pieces, controlling or colonizing parts for themselves. The colonial period was characterized by European domination but also by support in establishing institutions. Among others, new countries born from the Ottoman death include Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The political structures that the people of the region had lived with for centuries vanished. From the 1940s to 1960s, the countries that had been under British or French colonial domination gained independence. Several became monarchies. Others followed similar patterns of military autocratic leadership that lasted until the Arab Spring; a first generation of strongman leaders worked as modernizers, while their successors remained autocratic but oversaw stagnation. The military autocracies echoed each other in style and substance, setting the stage for the Arab Spring protests.
At the end of World War I, Turkey abolished the Islamic caliphate. The psychological impact of this in the Middle East is similar to what abolishing the papacy in Rome would be to Europe. The end of the caliphate left the Sunni Arab world with a gap in identity and values. With this change, the past century has seen an ongoing raw, violent power struggle in societies over developing a new definition of the role of Islam in public life. Some want separation between religion and state, and others want a greater public role for Islam. Some have a historic longing for the greatness of being part of a powerful Islamic empire. As an extreme example of this, ISIS now tries to lay claim to the Ottoman Empire’s vanished title of caliphate.
World War I was not only the end of the Ottoman Empire, but also the end of the empire as a predominant form of government in Europe and the Middle East. World War I spelled the end of four empires: Ottoman, Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian. The demise of the British and French colonial empires followed not long afterward, in the decades following World War II.
The empire, a large, multiethnic political entity with a dominant center ruling far distant lands,7 gave way to the nation-state, where the majority of people theoretically share a common culture and identity, where cultural boundaries are supposed to line up with political boundaries.8 The countries of the Middle East struggled with the evolution toward becoming nation-states. This century’s process of forging new nation-states from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire has been a troubled story of population swaps, ethnic cleansing, iron-fisted dictators, civil wars, and popular backlash due to the desire for something better.
The new borders combined ethnic and religious groups who vied for dominance within countries and separated other peoples who wanted to stay together. Other territories were contested. While the Ottomans had ruled a multiethnic empire with a number of (imperfect) mechanisms for enabling tolerance, the new borders, in combination with desire for self-rule, pitted ethnic group against ethnic group, leaving power vacuums and culminating in wars that have flared up over the past century into today. Whereas before peoples with differing identities had lived together for generations, now they were caught up in struggles to define new nation-states, over who would be ruling whom, and which values, traditions, and faiths would dominate the others.
Examples are many. Iraq, destabilized by dictatorship followed by war, is torn asunder in conflict between Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The new post–World War I borders split the Kurdish people (whose numbers reach 30 million today) into four countries—Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. What had been the Ottoman territory of Palestine has been split into Israel, Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, with Israelis and Palestinians left with competing claims on what is today Israel.
Power struggles led to instability, preventing development. Some governments, fearing the bubbling undercurrents of turmoil, quashed political life, innovation, and Islamic movements. For the past century, the countries of the Middle East drifted along, for the most part, languishing. The period was interspersed with territorial wars, conflict between ethnic and religious groups, and struggles between secularists and Islamist political parties. This combination of new states, power struggles, autocratic governments, ethnic conflict, and disagreement over the role of Islam in public life did not bode well for the people of the region. Educational levels are among the worst in the world. Illiteracy is high. Corruption is rampant. The region is notorious for its mistreatment of women. A brain drain of educated Arabs means the region has lost some of its most capable people. The world is still reeling from the repercussions of the disastrously managed disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
The Arab Spring and its aftermath are about challenging the order that was set up upon the death of the Ottoman Empire. First, it is confronting the model of autocratic government that began then, calling for a new social contract, a changed relationship between governments and their people, and more pluralistic inclusion in governments. Second, in some cases, it is challenging the very borders of the countries established after World War I, plunging the region into chaos.
3. Islam Is Undergoing an Identity Crisis
There are several transformative debates about central issues in the Islamic faith, shaped by a diverse array of actors: scholars in universities, preachers in mosques, politicians blending policy with faith, voters at the ballot box, jihadist groups and militaries in violent conflict, and foreign policies of governments toward political Islam. Some argue that even with the current instability, Islam is undergoing something similar to the Renaissance, an era of struggle with ideas.
First, there is a schism about Islam’s role in government and public life. Islam historically has been viewed as a communal pact between God and society, while Christianity today is viewed as a relation between God and individuals. This conceptual difference has profound influence on how people view the role of religion in government. In the West, norms of separation of religion and state evolved over time because of conflict over political power between the church and European monarchies. In the Middle East, separation of religion and state did not happen until forcibly imposed by colonial powers or secular autocracies in the twentieth century, after the abolition of the caliphate in Istanbul. While some people in the Middle East view religion as private matter, others do not view the separation of religion and state as legitimate. Furthermore, in some cases, there is tension between the identity of being part of the nation-states formed a century ago in the Middle East and the identity that comes from being part of the Islamic idea of umma, the wider community of Muslims, that existed under empire.
The second issue is the approach to interpretation of modernity versus the past. Khaled Abou el Fadl, a leading Islamic scholar at UCLA, writes that the Islamic world is polarized between two opposing sets of values and worldviews—what he calls “moderate” versus “puritanical” Islam.9 He writes that while all Muslims agree on the central tenets of the faith (such as monotheism, accepting Mohammed as a prophet, and praying five times per day), there are areas of profound disagreement: understanding and applying Islamic law (shariah), approaches to modernity, and the legitimacy of holy war (jihad). For example, while most Muslim societies blend modernity and faith, a growing Salafist movement aims to imitate life at the time of the Prophet Mohammed, through either peaceful approaches (the quietist Salafists) or violence (the Salafist-Jihadists).
These differences over the role of religion in public life have played out in the post–Arab Spring world. Constitutions have been written with various prescribed roles for religion in the state. In Turkey and Tunisia, there is a delicate balance among democracy, Islam, and secularism, with Islamic parties participating in government. At the same time, ISIS is violently imposing its vision of an Islamic past on peoples today. The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates have taken government roles in Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan, only to be democratically voted out, forced out by the military, or kept out through technicalities of electoral laws. Increased democracy in Middle Eastern countries has meant a rising role for Islamist parties (with differing approaches to democratic participation), and therefore greater tensions with secularists. Islamic political movements will be powerful for the foreseeable future; stability in the region will depend upon developing a consensus regarding the role and limits of religion in public life.
4. The Status of Women Is Changing
It is not hard to find stories or statistics about the challenges that women in the Middle East face in employment, legal systems, family rights, or social norms. The Arab world ranks last in the world on gender parity indices.10 Women’s employment is only a quarter of that of the men across the region.11 Surveys have found that 95 percent of married women and 50 percent of schoolgirls in Egypt are circumcised.12 Social norms limit women’s autonomy and ability to interact with men in public life and in the workplace.
But Middle Eastern women are step-by-step defining their own version of modernity. The path they choose will be rooted in their own culture and values, different from the path that Western women have chosen. Several trends bode well for women in the region.
First, women played significant roles in some of the Arab Spring movements. They protested, blogged about human rights abuses and corruption, served as members of parliament, founded newspapers, created political parties, negotiated compromises, made forceful arguments shaping public debate in the media, and wrote constitutions. Women have served as political leaders in both secular and Islamist parties. Throughout my interviews for this book, women described how the Arab Spring movements had served as a platform for women’s increasingly strong voices.
Next, across the Middle East, girls and women are outperforming boys and men in education.13 In elementary and secondary education, girls score higher than boys in reading, math, and science on international tests. Women have higher university graduation rates than men in over half of the countries in the Middle East. This educational achievement may increase women’s future employment, with more women having the additional choices and autonomy that earning one’s own money brings. The data actually shed light on a different and counterintuitive problem—the region should be concerned about better educating boys and men.
Next, Middle Eastern women are demanding changes in rights, family law, and custom. While women in Turkey gained the right to vote in 1930, women in most Middle Eastern countries began to secure voting rights in the 1950s, with a few more countries joining each decade. In 2005, Kuwait straggled in as the latest country in the region to grant women suffrage, and Saudi Arabia committed to allow women to vote in municipal elections.14It takes time for voting rights to lead to tangible changes. Furthermore, in the past ten years, a number of countries (including Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria, and Morocco) ratified improvements in family law affecting women, including equal divorce laws, right to travel without a guardian’s approval, and protection against domestic abuse. New post?Arab Spring constitutions in Tunisia and Egypt proclaim that women and men are equal. Furthermore, there are movements of “Islamic feminism,” in which women pursue additional rights, arguing that such rights are guaranteed to them in Islamic texts.15
It is efforts like these that will create changes, with women from the region pushing for advances that they want within the context of their own culture. Social norms change slowly, but over time they do evolve, in particular in the face of determination from a region’s women.
5. The Future Depends on Meeting the Needs of Youth
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has a “youth bulge,” with one of the youngest populations in the world. From 1950 to 2010, the population of the region quadrupled, with social structures, economies, and opportunities not keeping pace.16 Today, 70 percent of the region is under the age of thirty.17
Arab Spring movements started as youth movements. While motivations are varied and complex, an oft-noted reason was the frustration of youth in the lack of opportunities they have to succeed on the basis of their own abilities, and their belief that changing their governments could improve those opportunities.
Youth in the Middle East and North Africa have the highest unemployment rate of any region in the world, with over a quarter unemployed.18 As a region, the Middle East and North Africa ranks next to last in the world in educational achievements in primary and secondary education, just before sub-Saharan Africa.19 Furthermore, Middle Eastern universities have not excelled in quality by international standards, with few making international rankings lists and many not providing youth with the skills they need to meet the needs of the labor market.20
The task of improving opportunities for youth certainly faces challenges. These include poor education systems, stagnant economies, stifled private sectors, instability, government budget shortages, and a mismatch between skills provided by education systems and skills demanded by labor markets.
Yet media and technology have created powerful tools for youth to drive change. Youth have organized protests via Facebook, and individuals have communicated their dissent on blogs. Al Jazeera created public dialogue and showcased unprecedented criticism of governments in Arabic; other media stations followed. Citizens have access to open media from around the world and can clearly see that societies elsewhere function better. Governments are no longer able to control public discourse about politics. These factors have forever changed the Middle East and what youth are willing to accommodate. (Yet these new tools in media have also been used by extremist groups.) Now we will see how societies’ leaders and youth will translate these new circumstances into tangible plans and actions for improvement.
6. The Arab Spring Has Multiple Storylines
When the Arab Spring uprisings dominoed across the Middle East, friends and family frantically called and emailed to ask about my safety. I looked out the window of my apartment in downtown Doha, overlooking a tranquil cove of sparkling sea. Along the coast was a green expanse of meticulously manicured lawn, a park with families picnicking, spandex-clad joggers, and strolling couples holding hands. Shiny skyscrapers designed by some of the world’s biggest names in architecture glinted in the sun.
Things were different elsewhere. I looked at the Al Jazeera footage of crowds of protesters filling Cairo’s Tahrir Square like a sea of people, with youth gathering in collective proud fury and demanding something better, the thrill and chaos of people uniting in hope, exasperation, and strength. During the first wave of protests, I was texting my Egyptian friends late at night: “We are all Egyptians.” I felt like one of them, protesting for something better, and proud.
The Arab Spring was about renewed aspirations for positive change in society. But these shared aspirations have led to very different outcomes. In four countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya), stagnant leadership was overthrown. Two years after Tunisia ousted its president, the country adopted a new constitution, praised as one of the most balanced in the Middle East. Yet Tunisia suffered a series of bloody terrorist attacks in 2015, killing sixty tourists; extremist groups aimed to destroy the economy and destabilize the country. In Egypt, protesters overthrew a repressive government; voters elected an Islamist government; protests demanded removal of the Islamist government; and the military violently overthrew the Islamist government—with Egypt thus arriving back where it started. Syria, Yemen, and Libya became embroiled in civil wars. The Islamic State stepped into the vacuums in Syria and Iraq, weakened by warfare; they killed or displaced millions of people, and destroyed ancient heritage sites. These wars have led to the worst refugee crisis since World War II, with refugees fleeing to neighboring countries and some seeking safety in Europe. Protests in Bahrain led to a forceful military crackdown. Iranians conducted protests in support of the Arab Spring in 2011; Iran’s 2009 Green Movement protests that resulted in government violent suppression were viewed as a precursor to the Arab Spring. But protests in Jordan and Morocco led to incremental changes, including new or modified constitutions. In other countries, such as Qatar or the UAE, there were no significant protests, but continued investment in developing the economy and public services. While Turkey had protests during the same period, these were undertaken within the context of a struggling democracy, not demands to change the entire system of government.
Where is all this going? The unifying themes of the Arab Spring movements were aspirations for public accountability, dignity, a greater political voice, and more economic equality and opportunity for youth. The new directions countries are taking are divergent—some optimistic and others leading to turmoil and despair. Even with such dramatic contrasts, taken together as a whole, we are witnessing profound political and cultural changes that are reshaping the Middle East.
Starting the Journey
This is a pivotal period of history in the Middle East, with civilizational upheaval, redefinition of roles of governments and citizens, struggle over core societal values, and challenges to existing borders. Through the journey in this book, I would like to plant the seeds for reflection and paint a picture of issues that are shaping Middle Eastern society after the Arab Spring.
Copyright © 2016 by Shelly Culbertson