Beshweish (Easy Now, or Slowly, Slowly)!

On Revolution and Counterrevolution

  

 “In the Middle East the reality of continuity has always been masked by a surface impression of cataclysm,” William Dalrymple wrote in From The Holy Mountain, back in the twilight of the old century. 

He was on a mission then to capture the last breath of Christianity where it took its first, but his march was inevitably through what felt like a dying Eastern expanse, anguished landscapes that are as lush with color as they are soaked-wet with tears.   

The implication of Dalrymple’s panoramas was damning: catastrophe in the Arab world, though real enough, is the flipside of stasis. Excusable. Nineteen ninety-four was not a time of revolution.   Dalrymple was not issuing forth on the meaning and possibilities of uprisings, but on those of chronic violence in a place whose stubborn fundamental flaws belied the onrush of change.

We are, however, in revolutionary times today. Not surprisingly, the skeptics are many and talk of counterrevolution is rampant, as well it should be. But in warning against hostile forces, some observers are not just drawing on the example of revolutions old (French) and new (Iranian), they are invoking variations of Dalrymple’s verdict: try as we might, we Arabs are just not in the business of serious change. Our democratic pulse is dangerously faint, our attachment to civil rights is selective and self-serving, our politics is captive to the dictates of religion, our militaries are loath to cede power, our rulers are too brutal, our societies are convulsed by warring sectarian identities, our foreign enemies are many, our history is practically devoid of a single hint that we know how to turn a promising moment into a lived one…

The challenge, really, is too herculean and our will is pint-sized.

Understandably absent from this argument is the inconvenient fact that these were the reasons cited against the probability of an uprising in the first place. Barely, three months ago, most experts were agreeing that Arab regimes had perfected the art of survival, domesticating a once threatening Islamism and securing a whole people’s subservience through a potent mix of terror and bribery.

And yet, here we are in the midst of galling winds that have wiped clean heretofore unshakable vistas from this East.  

In the end, all these tremors may amount to nothing more than “surface impressions of cataclysm.” After all, a quick run through a stack of chronological postcards is all one needs to take in the full panoramic measure of the devastation wrought by our enduring defects.

But this tumult already is different from all others that came before it in this sorry pocket of our history. The fury was not decreed by fiat and did not come courtesy of coup d’etat or foreign invasion. It was not hammered out in secret, smoke-filled rooms. It did not choose to express itself through “Islam is the solution.” It did not reflexively reach for the gun, even in now very bloody Libya.

The walls have not crumbled, it is true, but huge slabs are lying in tiny pieces around them. The once impregnable fear barriers have given way everywhere, even in still fearsome Syria.  More than this, defunct formulas have been laid to rest and loathsome quid pro quos have been sorely tested. “Resistance” against Israel was for the longest time a pass for savagery against one’s own people, now it has become the very argument against it. If in doubt, ask al Akhbar’s Ibrahim Amin about it. Taboos have become run-of-the mill conversation, as talk of constitutional monarchy in Jordan finally establishes firm anchor.

The whole question of regime legitimacy and what sustains it is now in search of new answers. Paradoxically, for revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, this has become the inescapable point of departure for those looking to shape the future in their favor, the US and the West included.

So, I suppose, in the presence of the evidence before us so far, it might not be such a bad idea to second-guess conventional wisdom and resist groupthink as we try to assess the prospect of our uprisings. It’s an even better idea to remember that today’s events are not devoid of history; they are in fact carrying within them the full weight and meaning of a fraught 20^th century, even as they deploy and put into play the telltale signs of the 21st.

Take Tunisia and Egypt. Practically everything Tunisians and Egyptians did (and are still doing) since they first rebelled—their stubborn presence on the ground, the sophistication of their tactics, the energy in their demands, the absence of one party and one champion guiding them towards the light…--has a history laden with disappointments and betrayals written all over it. Mythical men and the junkyards overflowing with their broken promises appear to have been left behind in now obsolete times. When “sane” voices pressed for an early compromise, a deep memory and still open wounds counseled otherwise.

This is how Ben Ali fell. This is how Mubarak did not last till September and Suleiman never got to be president. This is how Shafic went the way of Suleiman, and Sherif, Sourour and Azmi, three main enablers of Mubarak’s rule, have fallen one by one. 

Most likely, this is also why, much to the chagrin of the army and many besides, “Tahriris” are refusing to let go of their Square, lest acquiescence signal that they have moved on. If Egypt’s Military Council is looking to recalibrate its performance, and if indeed it means to help the country transition to a democracy, it would do well to register the toll decades of deception have taken on the people.

But if the Council and the Muslim Brothers seem at times clumsy and downright crude in their actions, it’s because the new climate is as unfamiliar to them as it is to the “Tahriris” themselves, who could well be very close to overplaying their hand. Politics has just received the kiss of life. True, the military and their Brothers did well in the March 19 constitutional referendum, but the vote was not extraordinary for confirming the obvious—residual trust in the army and the organizational skills of the Islamists--but for laying bare, and so early, the boorish orientation and method of the MB which they’ve been trying so hard to hide. That the give and take is reaching deep into their rank and file and leadership cadre is in itself a significant response to this new age of people power.

None of this says that the revolution is sure to reach safe harbor. Economies are reeling, testing people’s nerves and patience. More ominously, counterrevolution, in Egypt and elsewhere, won’t take no for an answer. It still has a strong reserve of good will in the West, its allies in the region are many, changing sides and positions depending on the country. And needless to say, nothing in these uprisings is the least bit attractive to a very conservative, Shi’it-allergic, cash rich, miffed Gulf region.

But in contemplating what is yet to come, we do need to remember that Bouazizi did not kill himself for spite, Jan 25 did not just happen asudden and from both issued a pretty powerful contagion.

Perhaps the most important hallmark of the past decade in Egypt has been the reinvigoration of three different trends—professional, associational and workforce—within civil society that finally converged and brought the immovable Mubarak down. In “The Paraxis of the Egyptian Revolution,” a MERIP article teeming with superb insight and razor-sharp analysis, Mona al Ghobashy shows how these three trends had years of street and civic action before reaching Tahrir Square on Jan 25.

There was sweat and blood and sacrifice for years before 2011’s face-offs. This is a dynamic that is already grown up and well out of the cradle. Strangling it is not impossible, but it will be very costly and far from easy.

The West is Bad. Now Can We Move On?

What’s extraordinary about the constant back and forth on double standards in this region is that it is taking place at all.

Regrettably, moral high grounds are too often claimed by many and almost always owned by none. To be lectured by Nicola Sarkozy or Barack Obama about the supremacy of Arab humanity’s quest for freedom and dignity is no more asinine than listening to Ali Khameni or Hassan Nassrallah pounding the lecterns in its name. Tyrannies are constantly giving each other passes and alibis in the Gazan, Syrian, Iranian and Sudanese barracks as they do in Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and every other wretched system in the Western camp.

Certainly it is tyranny that makes one of clashing regimes and betrays with such vehemence their shared love of hypocrisy. Here, on the reactionary side, is Saudi Arabia supporting the no-fly zone in Libya while issuing Wahhabist fatwas against popular discontent in the kingdom itself; and there, on the revolutionary side, is the Iranian clerical order celebrating rebellion everywhere around it but warning its own citizens that protesting price increases would be nothing short of treason.

The diehards on both sides, obviously, have their bones to pick in this fight; for the rest of us, the argument is very distracting and all the more annoying because of it. This is not to say that the damned moot point doesn’t belong anywhere in our spats. It does, right at the very beginning of the conversation, so that we can quickly get it out of the way, or at the tail end of it, so that we don’t have to sit through yet another harangue about how everyone wants a piece of us and the beauty of just saying no.

There are, it goes without saying, very grey areas of serious consequence in, say, today’s squabble over Libya, including the selectivity of blunt Western action there. Our fingers have been pointing at countless cynical motivations, from that fat, old fart, greed, to the more interesting one of fear: fear by a West that understood almost immediately after Gaddafi bared his teeth that it would not be easy to recycle him this time around, and so all too quickly declared against him. However, when the maniacal dictator appeared to regain momentum, the West had to move lest he soon enough direct his wrath against them.

Fine! Each reason has its ardent followers and an army of experts to egg them on. Along with rigorous political analysis that is paying due respect to uniqueness of location, the presence of human agency and its fallibilities and possibly employable tensions between the interests and tactics of longtime friends, we have, Oh, woe is me, it must be the oil, a one-liner that always wants to play the ode.

The basic truth is that the West is not (and has never ever been) here to do us Arabs any favors. And while, as a matter of principle and law, we have the perfect right to insist (always) on non-interference in our affairs, we also have the basic wits—and certainly the experience--to know that this right roams our earth an orphan.

We also have enough sense in us to admit that temporary marriages of convenience between the worst of friends happen all the time here. We surely have enough intelligence to appreciate that mining openings and opportunities goes both ways, and being the victim is not the only role at our disposal. Mistaking deep convictions for sound reasoning has no place in serious debates about paths forward.  Not unless we want to kick ourselves out of this round of history as well.

However cynical its long term intentions in Libya may be, this much is stark clear about the West’s current military operations in it: they did help avert a bloodbath and they did stop Gaddafi in his tracks. Because of it, Libya is still in play and change in the Middle East can still savor yet another victory. 

Some of us on the outside can afford to quibble with these facts, but the Libyans themselves, including Gaddafi, are dead sure about them.

There is much that Western intervention will not solve and much it no doubt will complicate, none more important than the shape of a Libya(s) free of Africa’s king of kings, but there is quite a bit in it for rebelling Libyans to exploit, most crucially the breather it is giving them to regroup and tip the balance in their favor.  

It’s not neat, it’s not pretty, but it’ll have to do for now.

****

We are a well-endowed, strategically located region forever exposed.    

No matter!

For the West, the most screaming of the past two months’ realizations is that the Arab people do have a say. Had not enough Tunisians and Egyptians made their stubborn stand, Sarkozy’s henchmen would still be tipsy at sea with Tunisia’s Trabelsis and the White House would still be all tangled up explaining why Husni, for all his blemishes, is not Ben Ali.

Here’s another realization for us Arabs to keep close by as we plow ahead: the West’s eternal love of stability can be just as much a push for change as against it. Even conspirators listen when they’re made to.

Frankly, the uprisings are haggling in high stakes, chaotic, unpredictable, dead serious times. A few years from now, we could well be looking at completely new geographies and living in totally different political climates, some imaginably sunny, others possibly still grim and damp. Crying foul is good and right, but to those who are always itching to vent, think overture and not an entire symphony, so that we can get on with the very messy business of wringing out of these changes a more promising life.

Already in Egypt, counterrevolution is in overdrive. Already malicious intent is conspiring with business as usual to pick on women, belittling the revolution and making a mockery of its nascent achievements. Mubarak is gone, but deep in the well of the system are cliques of bureaucrats, thugs and army men working hard to paint on the same old ugly legacy a fresh face.

And since we’re on the subject of foreign busybodies and rabble-rousers, watch how this neighborhood’s old hands, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, rev up their energies and deploy their resources as trouble ups its tempo in the Levant. There is plenty for them to spoil in this upheaval, at times hand-in-hand, at others at loggerheads. Looking for interesting scenarios? Watch how they all—each for their own reasons—come together for the Assads in Syria and battle it out in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen.  

This is the test that is before us, and it is about to get much harder. But, as a good woman from the human rights community put it to me the other day, “Democracy is as strong as the people force it to be.” Similarly, the West is as amenable as we force it to be.

Yes, the West may be bad. Get over it! We need to move on.

So, What Gives?

On Niall Ferguson, Benjamin Barber and the Moment

Which is it, the moment or the medium, that is failing historians like Niall Ferguson and Benjamin Barber? Reading them in Newsweek and Foreign Policy or watching them on CNN, one is astonished at the chagrin with which an historic Arab jolt is first disparaged and then swiftly thereafter dispatched as so much unruly history.

To be fair, they’re two among many who seem to be suffering from acute discombobulation when speculating on the meaning and implications of the recent Arab uprisings. The unbearable pressures of the times perhaps.

Still, you would have liked to see intellectual rigor—at least in the normally feisty and audacious Ferguson--meet, as equal, this momentous turn of events. Even Christopher Hitchens, who in Vanity Fair takes a machete to hope for Egypt, bows willingly to nuance and the relevant detail of history.

So, what gives for Ferguson et al?

Is it far too many years and too much energy invested in a sure way of thinking about us Arabs, and then we upped and made a mess of it all?

It’s not the party pooping that is objectionable. Although I find myself easily agreeing with one of the comments on Ferguson’s article in Newsweek that he “seems to value the search for controversy as much as the search for truth,” playing the devil’s advocate is almost always useful, especially in heady times of euphoria.

Moreover, we all hold Ferguson’s caveats about revolutions--the deceivingly bright early hour, the ensuing vacuum into which the most organized (and hard-line) political groups jump and lay siege to, the tyranny that is almost sure to follow…—as self-evident. Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution (for one) sits just as well read and comfy on many a shelf in this region as it does on his.

But if indeed the future could become very untidy for us Arabs, it’s all the more reason for the head scratchers out West to avoid a cut and paste effort in explaining the nature and consequences of the tumult.

It’s this failure of nerve and imagination that frankly leaves the observer in full smirk mode. I don’t expect Ferguson to cheer revolting Arabs on—God forbid--but I do expect him to put up a better fight against them. His aversion to UnAmerican Revolutions is so feebly argued, the reader begins to suspect he’s desperately trying to yawn his way out of his contract with Newsweek.

He chides the two-year old presidency of Obama for cutting back on US investments in local reformists (what we call here the kiss of death) and for failing to exploit divisions within Islamism, with hardly a line about how and where, and then he offers this piercing abbreviation of George Bush’s winning strategy in the Middle East: “…Bush put an end to all that double talk by practicing as well as preaching a policy of democratization—using force to establish elected governments in both Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Surely an endorsement ringing enough to wake Karzai up from his drug induced stupor and make him run in yet another free and fair election.  As for ending the double talk, Saudi Arabia’s women are still bending over backward in thanks to the Bush Administration.

After moping from one sloppy assertion to another, Ferguson reaches this unusually prescient conclusion:

“In the absence of an American strategy, the probability of a worst-case scenario creeps up every day—a scenario of the sort that ultimately arose in revolutionary France, Russia, and China….

Yes, Americans love revolutions. But they should stick to loving their own.”

Well, that’s helpful. It kinda puts that whole strategy thing into perspective.

If you really want to distill from Ferguson’s point some kind of an essence, it can only be this: better a thousand times regime change by foreign force (costs included) than a homegrown, down-top crack at it. Why? Because, well, just because…it’s neater that way. 

So, first they shame you for not having it in you, then they want to spank you for proving them wrong.

Benjamin Barber (to Fareed Zakaria in GPS/CNN), poor man, is “ambivalent” about all these new winds blowing through the Arab world—and rightly so--but not a tad bit about his role in laundering the likes of Saif al-Islam and his father’s Libya. When pressed in Foreign Policy, the most he can muster is, I am not the only opportunist--or buffoon--around (“wrong, who got it wrong?”); the entire Western establishment was in on it, including Human Rights Watch, Blackstone, Blair, and Prince Andrew. “I mean, it's just 20/20 hindsight.”

It’s not that Barber was alone (or unique) in choosing to work within oppressive systems to try to reform them, but his choice does compel him, doesn’t it, to point to a single tangible improvement Saif can own up to after seven no doubt hard years of changing his father’s nasty habits—just one credible reform that helped make the lives of Libyans less terrified or more dignified and helped make Barber’s own involvement with the highfalutin heir apparent somewhat less embarrassing to him and his judgment.

But frankly, this is just too silly. All of it! The temptation is to laugh it away--except for that same nagging question I had upon reading Martin Amis’s Horrorism about Islamism in the English Guardian five years ago: “Why would a man with his pulsating intellect, a man who seems to know enough and know it well write as if he knows nothing at all?”

In truth, mainstream media are not ideal platforms for historians or authors at their most ponderous. But nuance and intellectual integrity don’t need much room and they don’t need a special podium.

It’s not the medium that is failing Ferguson and Barber; it’s the moment. 

Small Fry

Two weeks ago, at a small dinner party, a friend of mine chided me for ignoring Lebanon in my posts. “Why the silence?”

“Small fry, it’s because we’re small fry,” was my comeback.

I am hiding the varnish in this post because I suspect that sugarcoating very embarrassing realities in the midst of swirling events would only serve to further confuse an already confusing situation.

Political earthquakes in other Arab countries have pushed us out of the limelight. But it’s the cruel contrast between entire nations finally rising to the occasion and us sinking deeper into our Lebanese morass that has exposed us for the tiny people that we are.

Watch us now squabbling over ministries, fighting over quotas and under the table deals as other people clamor for dignity and citizenship. While we twist in the wind, they’re busy unleashing it against once omnipotent systems.

If you have been wondering as of late about our civil society, the answer is literally standing there desperate for you to catch it. Legend has it—at least among those who have concocted it out of their vivid imagination—that, in 2005, Lebanon rose first and sang away Syrian domination. True, more than one third of the population did come out, some of them genuinely (if naively) on the lookout for progressive ideas, but then, as with everything Lebanese, a possibly interesting moment turned into a hoax. Quickly enough, the Sect spread its wings, lest any of its children take themselves seriously, and swept them back into the fold.

Lebanon today withers precisely because there is no civil society fighting for it. There are just civic-minded individuals, lone voices in a cold, hostile, terrible sectarian wilderness. Guess how many Lebanese heeded the call for a civil state a few days ago? 2000.

No wonder, nearly everybody is shrugging us out of the picture. Even al Akhbar, the leading local daily, has relegated us to its midsection. Siyyed Hassan Nassrallah himself huffs and puffs about occupying Galilee if—that is if--Israel dares attack, but the warning falls on Arab politics much like pennies on a carpet.

Funny thing is, right about when Tunisia happened, Lebanon itself was hit by yet another political tornado. But juxtaposed against the mighty sight of Tunisia, we looked like the spoilt crybabies of the region.

As I write, not even Lebanon’s naval gazers, including quite a few of its own occupants, can muster the strength to waste time on this one.

****

Still, as my friend pleaded, we are part of this neighborhood and, satisfying as ignoring us is, Lebanon does deserve a couple of lines on its predicament if only because it is the go-to place when powers want to make a point or pick an argument.

So, here are a few lines on the latest:

Last month, in quick sequence that is astounding for the oft slumberous pace of Lebanese politics, the Syrian-Saudi deal over the special tribunal for the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri collapses under US (and some Saudi) pressure, Hezbollah and its allies resign from Sa’ad Hariri’s cabinet and, when all were looking straight ahead, out from the other end emerges ex-Prime Minister and current parliamentarian Najib Mikati (by any measure neither a particular friend of Hezbollah’s nor a staunch ally of Syria’s) to get 69 out of 128 parliamentary endorsements and sets out to form a new government.

Sunni Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, son of the slain Rafic, head of the largest parliamentary bloc and the mightiest man in his sect is not only brought down but thrown out by the Shiite Party of God and Syria’s Bashar, with barely a growl from his Sunni clan, a peep from Riyadh and the briefest of wait-and-see-statements from the White House.

One of the thickest redlines that zigzag through every artery of this country is thus crossed and the only ones boohooing are Sa’ad and his March 14 chums. By way of coups, they really don’t come smoother than that.

Hezbollah and Syria’s arm-twisting was transparent and, it goes without saying, predictable.  The quick footwork was the surprise. When everybody thought the “coup” would be loud, rough, all-or-nothing, possibly even bayonet lead, and made their calculations accordingly, the Shiite movement and our Syrian neighbor went creative. 

Not that Mikati is close to forming a cabinet, mind you. After all, why would Syria help us pretend that we can run things by ourselves when we clearly can’t? To those cursing it, I say salute it instead. 

****

When mulling over the nonsense that goes for politics in this place, there are three conclusions you should seriously flirt with, neither one of which, by the way, signals anything remotely intriguing about its future.

Let’s start small: the Hariri House rose with Rafic and it died with him. The feather-like fall of a Sunni prime minister at the hands of a Hezbollah-led, Syrian directed coalition means that Saudi Arabia—partly because of the unnerving incompetence of Sa’ad the son—is revisiting its old Hariri-driven Lebanon policy. A 20-year tradition has thus come to an ignominious end, none more so than for the family itself. From here on, expect the Saudis to reach out to a wider circle of Sunni faces in representing its Lebanese interests.

This doesn’t in any way imply that the Hariris are retiring from politics—although one hopes they’re inching closer to that option--but it does indicate that, as of now, it is perfectly reasonable for the public to shrink this overinflated balloon back down to size.

More than this, the ease with which presumably screaming-red sectarian lines were trampled upon confirms that the ground rules of Lebanese politics are fictitious, pretty much like the country itself, and are little more than expressions of the moods and whims of foreign patrons. It sounds like I am stating the obvious, but, believe it or not, there are still many who think that the local scene and its complex web of conventions actually count. They do, until they don’t. There are no real internal guideposts for the way of things, only external ones.

And that’s only one of so many reasons why we’re such small fry.

That’s not my angry voice you’re hearing in this piece, it’s the sound of my heart breaking.

 

If Turns into When…

Listening to the effusive statements of support for the people of Egypt and the “unfolding” Islamic revolution in the land of the Nile by virtually the entire leadership of Iran, I was reminded of that wonderful Persian adage: “You say something; I believe it. You insist; I begin to wonder. You swear on it; I know you’re lying.”

The dear gentlemen could well be autocrats at their most clueless, but the look and feel is that of a clumsy brood scrambling to own a narrative that has disowned them even in their very own country. As if to make sure that the lie was not lost on any of us, their chest pounding was taking place in full view of renewed house arrests, imprisonments and clampdowns on opposition websites and news outlets.

The twin tools of oppression and appeasement, not to mention talk of foreign conspiracies, are, of course, almost identical to Mubarak’s and those of every other maestro still standing.  Different from each other as all these despots are, when push comes to shove they all become brothers in arms: same tactics, same rhetoric, same textbook, really, and a frightening (or reassuring, as the case maybe) paucity of imagination.

Perhaps Iran’s strongmen are under the firm impression that their time-tested methods will prevent a repeat of upheaval on their own streets, those that in fact were the first in the area to agitate against power in 2009. Perhaps they feel that they have already weathered past unrest and are now home free, ready to reap the windfall of a collapsing Arab order. Perhaps, like Bashar Assad, they think that Palestine and populism have placed them on the right side of history.

We soon shall see. But of the many messages that are hanging everywhere on Ben Ali and Mubarak’s exits, like post-it-notes on the clipboard of history, one reads like a thrilling dispatch from the trenches:

If has finally turned into When…All bets are off…For everybody…   

Each and every locale, however unique its features and many its complexities, deserves to be in our sight. But already, the lines that had defined the old geopolitical map don’t count. Israel, only three months ago, looked across the entire Arab landscape and, except for a bump or two, saw flatlands all the way to Turkey and Iran. In good time, it could well be the Arabs (and Palestinians) who will turn more challenging and Iran more bland.

But gone as well are the challenges of the old, familiar kind. If, indeed, dignity is the lead aspiration and grievance in Tunisia and Egypt, it is because of so much more than Palestine. Citizenship, it might help Bashar and AhmadiNejad to know, is the cause for which Tunisians and Egyptians marched. That old one-two of brute force and breadcrumbs--that’s the rule of thumb that the Tunisian and Egyptian people have just retired.

Gone, finally, is the smug certainty that the Arab person just does not have it in them; that the security state can guarantee continuity in the absence of leadership; that fear is a good enough substitute for performance; that inhuman treatment and indecency can be camouflaged by lofty rhetoric, even if the name of God himself is invoked as fan and sponsor.

If arrogance and contempt for the Arab person did Ben Ali and Mubarak in, so they shall Israel and, yes, all those lined up with or against it in the region.

****

Conjecture has become all of a sudden fun. But of all the newfound realities competing for our attention, two have grabbed for themselves seats in the front: the imperative of open dissent and the beauty of nonviolence. The rest--and there are many making their entrance--need patience and more time still.

To be sure, that decades-long debate among clean, serious and well intentioned people on the feasibility of working within repressive systems to improve them has finally been settled: the proposition is not only silly, it is downright dangerous.

So, for those who have long hoped that discreet prodding is more than enough to persuade stern men to become more gentle; or for those who have long believed that islands of excellence can swim in a sea of muck; or for those who have long compared regimes and thanked their stars that they live under this ugly one and not that merciless one; or for those who have long kept silent about unbearable humiliation because Palestine comes first, Tunisia and Egypt have rendered a clear answer.

Whispers by these good people will have to turn into open reservations, private demands into public declarations. They will have to lobby and put conditions in the glare of light, make their voice part of the conversation. There is no case anymore for acquiescence, but there is a very compelling one for change and hope, and they have to be its most passionate advocates.

Nonviolence is a thing of beauty that Tunisia and Egypt have made live again. If Palestine was becoming increasingly unlikely because of the scandalous duplicity of Abbas and the astonishing idiocy of Hamas, the nonviolence of the Tunisian and Egyptian resistance has just recast it as doable.

Now is the time for the Palestinians to commit wholesale to peaceful resistance for Palestine, as some of them have been doing in the villages and by the Wall. The task is daunting and the facts on the ground are extremely unfriendly; however, the Palestinians have the pedigree, the experience and a strong network of alliances that reaches into the heart of Israel and the West. They have a stumped, stark naked enemy in the Israeli occupation. They have the cause and the world’s attention if they want it—but only for the briefest of moments.

  

“Lesson Over…”

From an Egyptian banner, “Lesson over, stupid.” (Intaha al darss ya ghabi).

In the last post, sent out barely a few days before Egypt raged, I offered a closing insight that perhaps many felt—especially those always on the look out at for their favorite scarecrow, the Islamists--was a little too hopeful:

“So far, the 21^st century has proved anything but dull. Perhaps one of the more interesting recent developments of the past five years is the way energized civil societies have been surprising the powers that be, fundamentalists included. In these testy times, neither pseudo-secular states nor Islamism need feel entirely too comfortable should the time for change finally come.”

Well, Egypt’s civil society has risen to the occasion, and I suspect that its Islamic fundamentalists were no less surprised than Mubarak himself. For in turning out in the streets, Egyptians finally needed neither the prodding nor the guidance of the former, and feared neither the ire nor the retribution of the latter.

In figuring out the next phase in Egypt’s tumult, this fact should be reverberating in every observer’s reasoning. 

Now we have to see how the army plays along. I am betting that it will soon decide that it has very little choice but to uproot Mubarak and the top brass of his regime, if only to preserve its discretionary powers as ultimate arbiter in Egypt. To forfeit its extraordinary standing and aura within Egyptian society for the sake of a totally discredited, exposed, openly reviled and doddering ruling elite would be unfathomable even if its interests do not really clash with theirs.  

In any case, we won’t have to wait too long—days or hours--for the answer.

****

But as entrancing as it is to watch Tunisians and Egyptians drawing, in the midst of the fog and storms, the face of their future, I would like to obsess about those features of years past that made these two peoples convulse with such unanticipated relentlessness.

I will not waste time on an anatomy of chronic frustration and disappointment, because as telling as it would be, it won’t explain what made quiet anguish turn into loud fury.  

Suffice it to say that everywhere your gaze turned as of late, it looked like a pile up of pain colliding head on from every direction. Endemic poverty, appallingly bad governance, crony capitalism that embarrassed even IMF’s most ardent diehards, unvarnished repression… And since Arab youth are the stars of the moment, dire predictions about their loitering anger has long been at the heart of practically every worthy read on this region’s predicament.  

And yet, in glaring view of this mess, only the most sensitive of eyes detected restless lives. It’s as if Arab authoritarianism had unlocked the secret to permanent rule, however atrocious it gets. The joke that ran around like a fact, until Bouazizi burned himself alive and brought Tunisia to its feet, was that the more the world changes, the more Arabs want to stay the same.

So, what made a presumed deaf mute scream?  

Of all the reasons racing to the finish line, one might just make it ahead of the rest once havoc settles down: in the end, Ben Ali and Mubarak had simply gone too far. Hold the “no shit, Sherlock!”  because this rationale is not as plain and straightforward at it sounds.

Having neutered (murdered, exiled, jailed, tortured, spied on, infiltrated, scared the wits out of…) all organized political opposition, rendering it either too feeble (the left) or demonizing it out of contention (political Islam), Ben Ali and Mubarak assumed the system had become impregnable against rupture. 

Once in that frame of mind, a certain kind of cannibalism became the way of once clever, ears-to-the-ground men. They started mindlessly eating into every sector and strata of society—middle classes, intelligentsia, labor, professional associations, etc—whose tacit support or acquiescence, at a minimum, is vital for continuity.  

Contempt took over with deafening effect. Whatever stirrings the regimes registered, they deemed as the usual blather of spineless disaffection. And in fact, Egypt, for one, has been rumbling for quite some time, but the system, thinking its powers limitless, judged the movements little more than trouble whining from the far edges of the garden.

****

It is hardly surprising, then, that revolt, when it came to Tunisia and Egypt, different as they are, was anything but organized. I mean, is it not extraordinary that in both countries pervasive intelligence services failed in predicting, let alone preempting the uproar?

The truth is that while Ben Ali, Mubarak and their men kept thinking in the box, the people upped and decided to walk wholesale out of it.

As an Egyptian friend of mine just told me, “So many things came into place and the timing, unbeknownst to all of us, was right.”

Khaled Said, the blogger who was beaten to death in 2010 by the police, the years of labor action to no avail, the church bombing that warned of a community cajoled into falling apart, the rigged parliamentary elections that reaped 97% of the vote for the official party with such impunity…

And then Twitter and facebook that could not be silenced no matter how hard the bad boys tried.

These were clear signs that this rule had just gone too far.

Once Ben Ali fell, Egyptians could only ask themselves, Why not Mubarak as well?

A pollster told me recently, “fear works.”

It does, but only for a while.

There are lessons for us as we forecast who’s next.

The question is: Are the rulers still standing actually listening?

Letter from Egypt

From Yasmina in Egypt, in the very early hours of Egypt's Day(s) of Rage.

(Yasmina, forgive the impromptu and selective translation...) 

Well, happy that you went down at noon?...

I am glad you’re here tonight.

The question provoked me.

Was it a picnic that I was going to?

Is it not a must for me to be there?

Or do I have a feather in my head?

And all those young ones out there; they’re, what?

Sons of dogs?...

But I did go yesterday behind my parents’ back…

All passion…

Anguished chants. “ This situation cannot go on.”

Would you believe, all these throngs… and no bissbiss,

no hisshiss?

People, old and young, with money and without,

wanting the same thing: to bring the regime down.

And how magnificent that,

“One, two, the Egyptian people, where are you?”

But then I had to leave…

Demonstrations in the afternoon picked up speed.

With my parents at home.

Feel the pulse, I thought.

“So what if I joined?”

Are you stupid, or have you gone mad?”…

I was about to go mad…

Are these people down there defending

a country not my own?

But then I did go down today, behind their back.

Everything is different.

Violence!

Security, security, security, everywhere.

Youth running.

Tanks.

Tear gas.

Disquiet in the heart.

The “wasps” came to push the crowds…

Tear gas.

Left, right.

Up and down.

Pac-Man like.

I walk…

Ambulances

Tala’t Harb…

Mohammad Farid…

Mohammad Basioni…

This is a fearful regime pretending it is not,

A clueless government pretending it is,

A crooked employee playing honest,

A grimy human being playing clean.

Today is not yesterday.

Chaos! Brutality!

...

The Original Arabic Text

ها انبسطتى  لما روحتى الظهر؟
بس انا مبسوطة ان انت مروحتيش بالليل؟
اسئلة استفزتنى, هو انا راحة رحلة علشان انبسط ؟ ده واجب عليه
ولا انا على راسي ريشة والشباب اللى بيروح يتظاهر دول ولاد كلب؟ هو مش مهم لو حصلهم حاجة? امال لو مرحناش مين اللى حيغيير.
للاسف انا روحت امبارح الظهر من ورا اهلى روحت وكان كلى حماس وقد ايه كل حاجة كانت متحضرة بنهتف بحرقة فعلا مش عاجبنا حال البلد. تصدقوا مع كل الاعداد دي ما حد عاكس ولا بسبس ولا حسحس. كل الناس كبير اوصغير معاه فلوس او ممعاهوش كان يريد حاجه واحده "اسقاط النظام  ويا سلام علي "واحد اتنين, الشعب المصري فين" ونشاور للناس فى بيوتها اللي بتتفرج علينا ملبلكونة ونشجعها تنزل وكنت بسئل هى الناس دى مستنية ايه علشان يبقى ليها دور وتنزل فالشارع, هما مبسوطين كمتفرجين, هما مبسوطين فى حياتهم وراضين بحالهم وحال الدنيا. وبعد شوية للاسف اضطريت امشى في نصف اليوم وسيبت المظاهرة امام محكمة النقض عند الاسعاف فى تجمهر كبير متسالم.
وروحت البيت وبعد شوية ابتديت المظاهرات تشد حيلها اوي عند بيتنا وبقينا انا واهلى المتفرجين.  فقولت اجس النبض
-         فيها ايه يعنى لو نزلت؟
-         انتي عبيطة ولا اتجننتى؟ ممكن في اي وقت يقلب بضرب
-         طاب حأنزل اشوف صحابى
-         لالا مافيش نزول خالص النهاردة
وكانت كلمة لا رجعة فيها, كنت ساعتها فعلا حتجنن, ازاى مش حأنزل تانى واكمل اللى ابتديته؟ منا شايفة انها سلمية, يعنى هما اللى نزلوا فالشارع بيدفعوا على بلد غير بلدى؟ هما اهلى مش مضايقين من النظام ولا مبسوطين فيه؟ ولا هما كبار وانا لسه عيلة؟
الحقيقة انا طلعت جبانة لانى مقدرتش اقف قدام أهلى علشان اغير فكرهم, امال ازاى عايزة أغيير النظام؟؟؟؟؟
و تانى روحت النهاردة فالخفا  وبالصدفة فى نفس مكان مسيبت المظاهرة امبارح, بس كل حاجة كانت متغيرة ووحشية.
امن امن امن بالشوم في كل حتة وشباب بيجري نحيتنا وواحد واقف جوه عربية مضرعة  وبينشن فيهم قنابل الغاز.
وقلبي انقبض... والدبابير جت تمشى الحشود ومجموعة امن ماشية تهش الحشود بالبنادق المسيلة. كان منظرهم زى pac man يمين شمال فوق تحت متبرمجين ومش فاهمين.
لاقيت ان ماليش لازمة انا مش جايه اتفرج على بهدلت شعبى, انا جايه اقول اللى فى قلبى.
ومشيت وعديت عربيات الامن:
 في الاسعاف:14 عربية
طلعت حرب : 8
محمد فريد: 6
محمد بسيونى 4
شوارع كتيرة معرفش اسمها بتوٌصل للتحرير ما بين 4 الى 8 في كل شارع
مطلع الكوبري يجى 15
ميدان عابدين يجى 16
كان فيه حوالى 150عربية حوالين ميدان التحرير ده طبعا غير المضرعات اللى يا بترش ميه يا بتنش غاز.
وجنب بيتى عند مطلع كوبري اكتوبر كان فيه 12 عربية علشان يمنعوا حد يروح التحرير.
ده نظام خايف وعامل نفسه مش خايف...
ودي حكومة مش عارفة وعاملة نفسها عارفة
وده موظف مش امين وعامل نفسه امين
وده بنى ادم مش نضيف وعامل نفسه نضيف

بس المهم انهاردة الناس اللي فالشارع اتغيرت, مش كلهم زي امبارح, الهمج والعنف ابتدى, يمكن علشان فيه ناس اتشجعت تشارك فعلا جعانة ومستبيعة وطفحة الكوتة.
وقد ايه كان فيه مخبرين و امن لابسين ملكى عادي , علشان يتوهوا ويقفشوا فالشباب من غير ميبقوا باينيين قوى.
25 يناير غير 26 يناير.
حتى انهاردة اتعكست مهو 25خلص وشكرا على كده ونرجع بقى نطلع الكبت
بس ياتري 28 يناير و 4 فبراير وسبتمبر و2011 حيحصل فيها ايه؟
ياتري حسنى بيفكر في ايه وحالنا ليه بقي كده يا مصر يا مصرياللى بتاعتى بس اتنهبتى واحنا بنتفرج.
العمارة اللى قدام مدخل محكمة النقض فالاسعاف اسمها عمارة الشواربى باشا بصوا عليها, ادخلوا مداخلها الاربعة, شوفوا الفن والزخرفة وانتم تعرفوا ليه يا خسارتك يا مصرياللي بتاعتى بس اتنهبى واحنا بنتفرج
مش عارفة اقول قوم يا مصرى ولا خلاص مافيش فايدة حاجة تتصلح وتتغيير. حنتبدى من فين ولا فين.

  قوم يا مصري مصري دايما بتناديك
رجعلى نصري وامجادى وحياة عينيك