THE ARAB SPRING -- THE ARCTIC WINTER

The Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, is over. The arctic summer which followed was short lived and fall is fast approaching. The northerlies began to blow and the long cold winter is about to set in.  Soon the long arctic nights will blanket the land.

What gave us hope to think otherwise?  Democracy is a profoundly Western concept. We own it. It has its roots in Greek antiquity; it developed slowly and torturously in Europe, made its way to the New World, and finally was accepted by the western world as the expression of the highest form of our collective political development. We were so enamoured by this system that after WWII we began to graft this system on to the bodies of Asia and Africa, and more recently on East Europe and the Middle East.  We compared socialist systems with democracy and rightly found them wanting. We looked at oriental despotism in its various forms, and found them to be unquestionably unacceptable. So, we came to the conclusion that democracy is far better than anything else on offer. George W. Bush said: “ I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul “. (April, 2004) This was accepted as a truism; it became mandatory for all nations to adopt democracy and those countries that balked found themselves ostracised. Unless, the country is rich in oil.

I would argue that the demonstrators that toppled Mubarak were not representative of the broad spectrum of the Egyptian population.  Like many others, I sat glued to the TV and following the protest on the internet. What I saw was a large number of young men and women, primarily students or recent graduates, well dressed, well spoken and articulate. Most spoke good English. These people embraced western ideas, and were demanding a say in the decision making process and, more than anything else, they wanted jobs. Overwhelmingly they were scions from families that were not part of the elite, had no political clout or social influence. They laboured to give their children an education and a chance for a better life. However, there is a downside to education: it creates expectations, and when these expectations are not suitably addressed, it leads to discontent. These young people, armed with mobile phones, twitters, and face books, made the revolution happen without really knowing what they were doing.  They were neither organised nor did they have clearly defined goals.  The election which followed proved this: the farmers who live under near-feudal conditions, the uneducated masses who are fundamentally conservative, the religious that are numerous, voted for the religious parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood. The people who started the revolution, i.e. the young educated and westernised elite, were left out in the cold.

Morsi will, or, I should say, already has, bulldozed the new constitution through the parliament and by doing so, set the country on the road to becoming an Islamic republic. The constitution will then go to the people for endorsement, a referendum. I have no doubt whatsoever that it will receive overwhelming support because the majority of people in Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, are conservative and suspicious of western ideas. Moreover, questions will be couched in such a manner as to make its acceptance of the constitution a foregone conclusion.

Finally, there is the question of the military. In most countries, there is a clear delineation between the role of the army and the police. The latter is there to ensure that the laws of the country are obeyed; the former to protect the country from outside enemies. In democratic countries any blurring of these lines are not tolerated.  In the Arab world, and indeed some other countries, often the role of the army is to support the government. It certainly was the case in Egypt; only when this support was withdrawn, did Mubarak’s regime fall.  Quite often the military also act as a bastion against religious extremism, as in the case of Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt, at least in the past. Now a major problem is about to develop: Egypt is the second largest recipient of US military aid. The Egyptian military is keen for this to continue. Meanwhile, politically, Egypt is drifting towards becoming an Islamic state, and the Muslim Brotherhood which is the spiritual godfather of the global Islamist movement, is jockeying for a more prominent role in the Arab world, a situation which cannot possibly be in the interest of US.  Should that happen, military aid to Egypt would surely be reviewed.

Or the military will step in and put an end to the Brotherhood and the new Pharaoh.