Dr. Bessma Momani is Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo’s Balsillie School of International Affairs and a senior fellow at both the Brookings Institution and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation. Dr. Momani is also Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She has authored and co-edited over six books and of over 50 scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters that have examined the IMF, the World Bank, petrodollars, regional trade agreements in the Middle East and economic liberalization throughout the Arab Gulf and the Middle East. Dr. Momani has received a number of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council awards and prizes for her research on global economic governance and political economy of the Middle East. More recently, Dr. Momani has been a public commentator and analyst on the Middle East and the Arab Spring. She is a regular contributor to CBC radio and a Middle East analyst on CTV News, CBC The National, Al-Jazeera English, Bloomberg TV, BNN and TVOs the Agenda. She has also published numerous op-ed articles on the Arab Spring in Canadian and international news outlets as well maintaining her own CIGI blog and Huffington Post column.  |
Idling While Syria Implodes
There will be no intervention in Syria until the crisis explodes. Sadly, the country is already imploding under the unbearable pressure of a civil war that has already cost 80,000 lives, driven millions from their homes, and destroyed countless dollars worth of infrastructure. But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will continue to deploy everything from airstrikes to “small-scale” chemical weapons against his own people with impunity until his atrocities spark a full-blow regional explosion. More …
Comment (0)Our Job Deficiency: A Challenge to the IMF-World Bank
At the IMF-World Bank meetings this past week, there were plenty of assessments of the state of the global economy that described the post-2008 recovery as anemic. Only a few went so far as to claim that the global economy is comatose. Yet, despite general agreement on the diagnosis, there was little consensus on how to solve the problem. Deciding on what tools and policies to use to stimulate growth is vital if we are going to cure the global economy of persistent enervation. More …
Egypt’s Fiscal Cliff
I had the opportunity to attend the annual conference of the Economic Research Forum in Kuwait City, hosted by the Arab Fund for Economic Development in early March. The forum brings together leading economists and analysts to discuss the Middle East region. When it came time to assess Egypt’s economic and political situation, it was hard to find too many optimists in the room. To say that Egypt’s economy is suffocating under the weight of a looming fiscal and political crisis is an understatement. Egypt is on the verge of a real fiscal cliff; if it goes over, the transition from authoritarianism to democracy will be fatally undermined. More …
The Most Important Lesson
In the ten years that have passed since the invasion of Iraq, an endless number of lessons have been drawn by military strategists, diplomats, politicians, and public relations analysts from what was, at almost every stage, a complete and utter fiasco. The continuing debates over what Iraq has taught us – is intervention ever the right policy? Can the perils of “nation-building” ever be overcome? What does an effective counter-insurgency strategy involve? – are important, but their value is diminished when they forget what drives them: the human cost of the war. The Iraq War left behind 5 million Iraqi orphans, took more than 100,000 Iraqi lives, forced four to five million Iraqis to flee heir homes and communities, displaced ancient Iraqi minority groups, and devastated much of Iraq’s infrastructure and economy. More …
Why Egypt Needs Space from Morsi
As Egypt’s democratically elected president, one would hope that Mohamed Morsi would have a finger on the pulse of the Egyptian people. Unfortunately, he’s looking more and more out of touch. An online campaign has begun, with typical good Egyptian humour, to nominate Morsi to win a trip to space – a place where Egyptians hope he might gain some perspective on his role in Egypt’s earthly troubles. More …
A Crisis of Confidence
Jan. 25 marked the two-year anniversary of the revolution that overthrew Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. This charged event alone would have been enough to cause tensions in the streets; the same-day release of court verdicts on the soccer clashes that took place in Port Said Stadium last February made a flare-up inevitable. But the chaos that has spread since that poorly-timed decision is being driven by something more fundamental: a deep crisis of confidence.
Egypt’s citizens are taking to the streets again – for different reasons – with one message: We no longer have confidence in the Morsi government to steer us forward. More …
Demand for Arab ‘Strongmen’ Weaker Than Ever
As we mark the two-year anniversary of the Arab uprisings, we see plenty of figurative post-mortems on the Arab leaders, or strongmen, that have been usurped by the masses. But what can we learn from these revolutions about the Arab people and the type of government they seek? How do these uprisings complicate the theory of “Arab exceptionalism” (as it was once described in polite academic and analytical circles)? This term, I’m afraid, was not intended as a compliment: Many analysts of the Middle East talked about how the Arab world was “exceptional” to the experience of democratization – and, implicitly, to modernization – thanks to resilient authoritarian political structures. In other words, Arabs were really good at constructing systems that revolved around security institutions, and that relied on nepotism and cultish adoration of the leader by the masses to surive. More …
Egypt’s (False) Choice
Since Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi announced his constitutional decree on Nov. 22, there has been dramatic unrest in Cairo. Morsi’s supporters and opponents have been staging their own demonstrations and clashing violently in the streets. Morsi’s decree gave him sweeping powers and was meant to stop the judiciary from disbanding the constituent assembly, which, stacked with Islamists, was writing the draft of the constitution. Morsi’s initial decree extended the drafting time by two months. When it appeared that judges would challenge Morsi further, the constituent assembly finished writing the constitution in a one-day marathon session.
Egyptian people are historically proud of their (albeit decaying) institutions. Unhappy with how the constitution was rushed through and forced upon them, opposition forces came together and demanded Morsi repeal the constitutional declaration and postpone the referendum. At that point, the army, which had been trying to stay out of the limelight since Morsi’s election, weighed in and delivered an ominous warning: If parties don’t “dialogue,” then “dark days” may be ahead. If this were a veiled threat of a coup d’état, it would pit the army against Morsi supporters, who, by all accounts, can come out in the hundreds of thousands when called upon. More …
Should Morsi Be Given a Chance? Yes and No.
Well before Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi issued his presidential decree to override the judiciary, Egypt was polarized between (albeit a generalization) lslamists and liberals/secularists. Although the president won through a free and fair electoral process back in June, this president already had a thin margin of support – he won only on a second round, and with only 51 per cent of the popular vote. In the first round of presidential voting, Morsi’s support was even thinner. It could be interpreted, then, that the country remains deeply committed to liberal – and, arguably, secular – principles. The fact is, though, that the Morsi government was democratically elected, and democracy is about a free and fair process, not about achieving one’s preferred outcome.
The Egyptian president had a legislature that was also democratically elected in a free and fair process. This legislature was overwhelmingly composed of Islamists – both members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafists’ Noor Party. Under orders of the military, the judiciary suspended the legislature and argued that the legislature had no right to sit without a constitution in place. Never mind the absurdity of the judiciary ruling taking place a year after the legislature was elected. The truth is, the judiciary was stacked with Mubarak-era cronies that not only distrusted the Islamists, but also feared that the legislature would continue the witch-hunt against Mubarak cronies and turn their eyes toward the inefficient and corrupt judiciary. Morsi has also promised to retry the Mubarak-era cronies and those found to be innocent of killing revolutionary protestors in 2011. This offended the judiciary further, but garnered support among Islamists. More …
No Turning Back on Revolution
As CIC Globalist of the Year Naguib Sawiris took to the podium to give his thoughts and reflections on the shape of the Egyptian revolution, one could not help but get the impression that there is no turning back in Egypt, but that the road ahead remains precarious and fraught with many difficulties.
Many political analysts would agree that the Arab Spring was born out of economic frustration. A perfect storm of unemployment, high food prices, corruption, and unequal wealth distribution were among the characteristics shared by the Arab countries where the masses have protested against their governments. It was thus remarkable to hear Sawiris, a self-declared “capitalist from his head to his toes,” point to the necessity of the Arab Spring and its value to Egyptian society.
As an Egyptian billionaire, Sawiris has likely been unaffected by much of the economic frustration experienced by most of his Egyptian compatriots – but he shared in the sense of indignation caused by the regime’s unscrupulous tactics of control. Think of the now-famous Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself ablaze after repeated police harassment for setting up his fruit stand. While not nearly as dramatic, Sawiris had the frustration of seeing his offices ransacked by regime thugs for no good reason. The purpose of the government’s raid on his place of business, in Sawiris’s interpretation, was to intimidate him and remind him of who was in control. Such events illustrate the pervasiveness of the regime’s application of humiliation and suppression, regardless of one’s economic class.
While Sawiris believed there was no turning back, and that the revolution was a good thing for Egypt, he rightly noted that much uncertainty remains. On Nov. 28, Egypt will face its first democratic parliamentary election. In light of this, Sawiris noted how many liberal and secular parties were at a real disadvantage for only having had a few months to get organized. In contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists have been organized for over 80 years, building a network of support based on their provisions of social services. While Sawiris stated that he admired the Islamist government of Turkey’s AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for declaring the necessity of preserving secularism, he also noted his own fears that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood would choose to emulate a theocratic Iran rather than a secular Turkey.
The Muslim Brotherhood was suppressed and oppressed under the autocratic Egyptian regime, and its appeal to social justice and welfare remains an attractive message for a country suffering from rampant poverty and inequality. While many analysts believe that the Muslim Brotherhood would garner a minority of support in Egypt, Sawiris’s fear is that liberals and secularists will be apathetic and not take the time to vote on Nov. 28, thus enhancing the Islamists’ power in parliament. The task before the new parliament – including drafting a new constitution that will be put to a referendum in spring 2012 – is crucial to Egypt’s future. Sawiris was critical of the fact that the important task of drafting a constitution was being left to a novice parliament: He would have preferred a group of established, well-respected individuals to draft this constitution, as they would have a better chance of enshrining minority and individual rights.
As a Coptic Christian, Sawiris reflected on his own fears of rising religious intolerance in Egypt. As the Arab world undergoes this dramatic social and political change, there is great fear that the Middle East’s mosaic of religious and ethnic groups will be harmed. In many ways, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a consistent reminder to the Arab world of how democracy promotion can go terribly wrong. Many of Iraq’s minorities were sent into exile as the three predominant Iraqi groups of Arab Sunnis, Arab Shiites, and Kurds fought to divide the spoils of the new Iraqi state. Many of Iraq’s minorities were ignored – or, worse, ended up as global refugees. Arab countries with religious or ethnic diversity – like Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain – that have seen street uprisings are painfully reminded of the Iraqi scenario, in which democracy promotion soon turned into sectarian conflict.
While the future of the Arab Spring is unclear, the fact remains that the region will never be the same. The shackles of fear of government have been broken, people will continue to demand public accountability, social media will always question government information, and the region’s youth bulge will not accept anything less than real reforms and democracy. The Arab Spring has changed the region. It has yet to be determined whether this change is for the better or worse – but there is no turning back now.
Photo courtesy of Reuters.
