Editor’s note: This op-ed by former ABC News reporter Barrie Dunsmore first appeared in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus.
We’re approaching that time of year when old sages lean back, stroke their beards and gaze into the future to ponder the eternal question — what will the New Year bring? After all, at the end of each year that’s what the people expect from their sages. But if wisdom comes with age, what I am wise enough to know is that when it comes to predicting the future — don’t.
As I look back on 2011, it’s notable that one year ago, neither I nor just about anyone else on the planet foresaw the Arab Spring. Yet the event that inspired that movement actually occurred on Dec. 18, 2010. That’s the day that a previously unknown, ordinary man named Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself to death to protest his mistreatment by the Tunisian police. This set off nationwide demonstrations and on Jan. 14, longtime Tunisian strongman President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. The Arab Spring had claimed its first political prize, merely two weeks into the New Year.
Before January was over, Tunisia’s unrest had spread to Egypt. And on Feb. 11 after only 18 days of protests, the 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak came to an abrupt end. Four days later on Feb. 15, anti-government resentment exploded in Libya. In mid-March, NATO airstrikes began in support of the Libyan revolt. And on Oct. 20, Muammar Gaddafi, who had despotically ruled his country for more than 40 years was killed by revolutionaries.
And so, in a matter of a few months, three Arab tyrants who had collectively wielded power for more than a hundred years were overthrown. Meantime opponents of existing regimes went to the streets in Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen with less decisive results. In Syria, after several months of violent repression by President Bashir Assad, his bloody battle with the Syrian people is teetering on the edge of sectarian civil war. None of any of this was foreseen just one year ago.
While I don’t mean to imply that failure to predict the future disqualifies me or anyone else from extrapolating what has happened this past year into what we might expect from the Arab Spring in the months and years ahead. But we should do so with humility (a quality in short supply among the punditocracy). And as always, we need to keep an eye on the lessons of the past, both the recent and not so recent. In that latter context, I was impressed with an article in Foreign Affairs magazine this past summer by Lisa Anderson, the president of the American University of Cairo.
She began: “In Tunisia protesters escalated calls for the restoration of the country’s suspended constitution. Meanwhile, Egyptians rose in revolt as strikes across the country brought daily life to a halt and toppled the government. In Libya, provincial leaders worked feverishly to strengthen their newly independent republic.”
The Arab Spring of 2011? No. The year was 1919.
Professor Anderson went on to note that the “inspirational rhetoric” for the uprisings of 1919 was President Woodrow Wilson’s famous Fourteen Points speech which stressed self determination for all peoples. His message traveled to the Middle East, by way of the revolutionary social medium of that era — the telegraph. She also added the important point, “The uprisings of 1919 also suggest that the calculated spread of popular movements seen across the Arab world (this year) is not a new phenomenon.”
What we learn from history is that the aspirations of the 1919 Arab uprisings were snuffed out by the victors of World War I, principally Britain and France, who divvied up the Ottoman Empire between them with little regard for the Arab nations and tribes seeking their independence. Following World War II, the United States and the European powers, with the full collusion of Arab Kings and dictators, perpetuated the suppression of incipient independence movements. They did so, they argued “in the interests of stability.” In fact, their singular interest was ensuring that the world’s ever-increasing demand for Arab oil would not be interrupted.
Whatever happens following the Arab Spring of 2011, the days of that grand Western strategy are over. But what comes next is much less certain. I cautioned in this space last spring that while revolutions for freedom from oppression are intoxicating, quite frequently the idealism of the disorganized street protesters is hijacked by professional revolutionaries. Think Citizen Robespierre ( France), the Bolsheviks (Russia) and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (Iran).
Most Arabs are Muslims but Islamic political parties were usually banned by Arab dictators. Yet movements such as Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood were still the best organized to contest free elections. So it’s no surprise that Islamic parties have done very well in the first elections in Tunisia and Egypt since the Arab Spring. In the early voting to choose a new parliament in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 40 percent of votes cast and the ultra-conservative Salafists a surprising 25 percent. The liberal secularists who led the protests in Tahrir Square ran a poor third. If this holds, the Islamists will have a significant majority in the new Egyptian parliament. This resurgence of Islamic parties is seen by many as a threat to modern, liberal values. Among other things the Salafists are opposed to alcohol, women’s rights and the peace treaty with Israel. Mindful of secular concerns, some Islamic leaders are expressing willingness to make alliances with non-religious parties. However the real power of that new parliament is unclear as the ruling Egyptian military shows few signs of being willing to cede power to civilian control.
So the picture is rather messy. Yet I would remind Americans that from the first shots of the American Revolution at Lexington to the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was a period of 12 years. By any historical measure, these are early days for the Arab world’s new revolution — a now seemingly inevitable one but given its broad nature, still with numerous potential outcomes.
