Efforts to return Syria’s Assad to Arab fold amount to hollow victory for autocrats
By James M. Dorsey
Two developments, the pending return of Syrian president Bashar
al-Assad to the Arab fold and protests in Sudan,
Jordan
and Tunisia,
send contradictory messages of where the Middle East and North Africa are headed.
Conservative monarchies like Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates that for much of the past decade have gone to great lengths to
reverse the achievements of the 2011 Arab popular revolts that toppled the
autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and sparked mass protests
in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf
have heralded
the pending lifting of Syria’s suspended membership of the Arab League
as symbolizing the definitive death of the Arab spring.
A number of recent contacts, including a visit to Damascus
by embattled Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, the first by an Arab leader
since the eruption of the Syrian civil war; a meeting in Cairo of Syrian and
Egyptian intelligence chiefs, and the refurbishing of the shuttered UAE embassy
in the Syrian capital, are
widely seen as precursors for Syria’s return.
In a twist of irony, Messrs. Al-Bashir and Al-Assad have
both been accused of war crimes. The International Criminal Court in The Hague
has issued
an arrest warrant for Mr. Al-Bashir that has largely been ignored by
Middle Eastern and African nations.
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew
Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first and only democratically elected leader, in a
UAE-Saudi-backed military coup in 2013, drove home autocrats’ seeming victory
with the
appearance in a court of the country’s two toppled leaders, Hosni Mubarak and
Mr. Morsi.
In a demonstration of Mr. Al-Sisi’s supremacy, Mr. Mubarak
was required to testify against Mr. Morsi in a case involving a 2011 jail
break.
There is little doubt that Middle Eastern and North African
autocracy has the winds at its back, in part because many in the region have
been taken aback by the brutality of the counterrevolution that has sparked
civil war, military intervention and harsh repression.
Nonetheless, multiple
protests in recent years across the region in Morocco, Tunisia,
Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Mauritania and Sudan as well as online protests in
various countries, including Saudi Arabia, suggest that grievances underlying
the 2011 and subsequent protests remain widespread. This is true for countries
like Egypt where the achievements of the 2011 protests have been reversed as
well as Tunisia, the one country that succeeded in pursuing political
transition.
A recent
survey conducted by Zogby Research Services (ZRS) concluded that only
one in five Tunisians and Egyptians believed that their country was moving in
the “right direction,” while 69% of Tunisians and 55% of Egyptians said their
countries were moving in the “wrong direction.”
When asked whether respondents felt they were better or
worse off than they had been five years ago, only 21% of Tunisians and 20% of
Egyptians said “better off,” while 59% of Tunisians and 64% of Egyptians
claimed they were “worse off.”
The survey seemed to confirm the notion that the key to long-term
stability in the Middle East and North Africa lies in resolving the region’s
ticking time bomb: unemployment and particularly youth unemployment.
The Zogby survey showed that employment, corruption,
nepotism, an improved educational system and political reform were priorities
for Egyptians and Tunisians. “The
bottom line: the need to create jobs and reform governance so as to create
greater confidence and opportunities for citizens are the challenges
faced by the leaderships in both Tunisia and Egypt,” said James J. Zogby, the
founder of ZRS.
Official youth unemployment rates across the Middle East hover
around 30 percent and 20-25 percent in North Africa with real rates believed to
be far higher.
Neither Arab autocrats nor democratic Tunisia have so far been
able to deliver. Yet, the outcome of the battle between greater political
liberalism and autocracy in the Middle East is likely to be won in the sphere
of economics rather than politics.
Arab autocrats as well as Tunisian leaders have since 2011
been long on promising economic reform that would create jobs and enhance career
perspectives and short on delivery. A failure to tackle corruption, the
enhanced role of the state in countries like Egypt where the military supported
by the UAE and Saudi Arabia plays an ever-greater role in the economy, and
depressed oil prices, have stymied growth in the region.
As a result, economics rather than politics will also seal
the ultimate fate of the Arab spring, a code word for the crisis of confidence
in the system and in leadership that has helped autocrats in the Middle East
and North Africa retain or regain power and has fuelled populism, nationalism
and the rise of the far right across the globe.
In a rare and furtive recognition of Middle Eastern and
North African realities by the Trump administration, the US embassy in Riyadh tweeted
in early December a
video with Arabic subtitles promoting peaceful protest as a path to "positive
social and political changes," but quickly deleted it when
questioned about it by Middle East Eye.
The video argued that "even in oppressive,
authoritarian conditions, protesters can tailor their campaigns to succeed."
It featured archival photos of celebrated protest movements, asserting that research
showed that between 1900 and 2006, non-violent protests had been twice as
effective as violent ones.
Mr. Al-Assad’s return to the Arab fold may constitute one
more setback for forces of change in the Middle East and North Africa but is a
long way from symbolizing their demise. For that to happen, the region’s
autocrats have to make good on their promises by implementing painful
structural reforms that inevitably will challenge vested interests. So far, there
is little indication of that happening.
Which means that a warning
earlier this year by Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), that “public dissatisfaction,
bubbling up in several countries, is a reminder that even more urgent action is
needed” remains as valid today as when she first issued it.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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