There’s no solution in sight in the Arab world

Ten years ago this week, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunisia, set himself alight in front of a government building in rage at the corrupt dictatorship.

His sacrifice wakened hope in millions of others – but then half a million of them also died, although not at their own hands, and the rest went quiet. It was called the Arab Spring.

It should have worked. Nonviolent democratic revolutions had overthrown about two dozen other tyrannies in the previous 20 years. So, when people in half a dozen Arab dictatorships, galvanised by Bouazizi’s action, went out in the streets to demand democracy in late 2010 and 2011, most expected them to win.

In fact they all lost, except in Tunisia. In Egypt, the protesters forced the old dictator to quit, but the army was back in power in less than two years. In Syria, Yemen and Libya, the protests morphed into savage civil wars that continue even today. Smaller protests in Lebanon and Bahrain were shut down by force.

This is a stunningly unimpressive record and it’s not because the whole nonviolent technique is falling out of favour. There are nonviolent attempts to remove dictators under way right now in Thailand and Belarus, both with a reasonable chance of success.

So, what’s wrong with the Arab world, where only four out of 22 countries are classed as “free” or “partly free” by Freedom House?

There have been attempts at democratic revolutions in the Arab world, too, but the good guys keep losing. What is so different there?

Here’s one possible answer. Everywhere else, the political choice is binary: tyranny or democracy. In most of the Arab countries there are three choices: the dreadful status quo, or democracy, or Islam. In every Arab country, out in the open or operating underground, there is also an Islamist opposition.

In the Arab world, two alternative routes out from the existing oppression are on offer to the public. Both have considerable popular appeal, but they are mutually exclusive.

Equality and its political expression, democracy, are human values but, for historical reasons, it is easy for Islamists to portray political democracy as an alien, “Western” value.

Equality just for the true believers is a viable rival doctrine for revolutionaries in countries where most people are Muslims – and that is the fault line that the dictators exploited.

This is not uniquely an Arab problem. Iran has been an Islamist theocracy for 40 years and Turkey’s once lively democracy has been slowly strangled during Recep Tayyib Erdogan’s 17 years in power.

But as the distance from the Arab heartland grows, so do the prospects for democracy.

Pakistan manages to be a democracy about half the time, Bangladesh and Malaysia are quasi-democratic all the time and Indonesia is a fully fledged, full-service democracy.

These four countries account for almost half the world’s Muslims – and African Muslims don’t seem to have particular problems with democracy, either.

The problem resides in the Arab world, where the political climate has only two seasons: brief springs and very long winters. It may not be an insoluble problem, but there’s certainly no solution in sight.

Gwynne Dyer.

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