As the trial of Hosni Mubarak in Cairo made clear earlier this month, the death throes of Arab authoritarianism are echoing across a region striving to put an end to tyranny and start afresh with a new democratic era. At this time last year, few experts on the Middle East would have predicted such a swift upheaval across the Arab world. Not many would have foreseen the dramatic images of Hosni Mubarak appearing before a court bedridden. But a year is a long time in politics and 2011 will, undoubtedly, go down in Middle Eastern history as one of the most spectacular in contemporary times.
Rewind to 2010 and the Arab world boasted a long list of authoritarian leaders. Muammar al-Qaddafi took charge of Libya in 1969; the Assad family has ruled Syria since 1970; Ali Abdullah Saleh became president of North Yemen (later united with South Yemen) in 1978; Zine -Abidine Ben Ali ascended to Tunisia’s presidency in 1987 and Hosni Mubarak took charge of Egypt in 1981.
Mubarak faces charges of corruption and the killing of up to 800 pro-democracy protesters during the January uprising. Around Egypt, segments of the population – especially the younger elements of the protest movement – question the point of such a trial. For them the priority for a new Egypt lies in the coming elections. The economy has faltered for some time now and with the recent uprising, a serious downturn in tourist revenues has further deepened the crisis. With such a daunting list of political and economic problems to solve one must wonder if the Mubarak trial is really worth the enormous media attention it is receiving. But the reality is that for Egypt and the wider region, this is a crucial turning point in recent history. Mubarak’s trial will highlight the utter lack of legitimacy that Arab authoritarianism has suffered from over the past few decades.
The seeds to Mubarak’s downfall were sown in the latter part of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule in the sixties. Following Egypt’s independence, the economic optimism of Nasser’s early socialist ambitions had all but vanished by the mid 1960s. By 1968, the political situation was in paralysis as mass anti-regime protests became a permanent feature of the polity. Under these conditions faith in the Nasserist project unravelled, forcing it to rely on ever more repressive measures until a change of leadership in 1970 and the beginnings of Anwar Sadat’s premiership.
Under Sadat, political authoritarianism spread to the economic sphere as Sadat’s ‘open door’ policy hastened the ownership of state resources into the hands of a wealthy few, whilst the masses plummeted further into poverty. By the time of Hosni Mubarak’s ascent to the premiership, the state had extended its authoritarian hand across the various sectors of Egyptian society. Decades of brutal repression, economic corruption and a closed political space trapped the Egyptian populace in a vicious cycle of mass arrests, fraudulent elections and despotic arrogance. This was a similar story across the Arab world, as authoritarian regimes economically exploited their populations and increased their stranglehold on the polity.
I mentioned at the start of this article how unprepared experts were for the ongoing Arab spring. How the swiftness of the uprisings caught off guard many inside and outside the Arab world. This is a fact. Yet the real legacy of the Arab spring must not be why we were unable to predict the present upheaval; rather it must be to examine the lessons learnt from Arab authoritarianism.
For the Obama administration, this means moving beyond traditional foreign policy tactics. Strategic interests and the maintenance of cosy relationships with authoritarian allies like Mubarak must be transformed. This means ensuring that democratic governance is the basis of any new regime, thereby realigning the US-Egyptian strategic relationship on conditional goals such as the insistence of an open political space, something long neglected by successive US presidents. This is vital, especially in light of the present rise of both secular pro-democracy Egyptian groups as well as political Islamist organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Wasat. This is a difficult task for both the US and Europe, considering their vehement opposition to religiously inspired political parties. Nevertheless given the utter failure of Arab authoritarianism in the region over the past fifty years, pragmatic reasoning means moving past the scaremongering of the Islamist ‘bogeymen’ as a reason for upholding authoritarian regimes.
But most importantly, it means putting Arab authoritarianism on trial so that we may learn not to repeat the same mistakes again. How can the US and European administrations grasp an understanding of the causes of the Egyptian uprising and the possible political trajectory of this geopolitically vital Arab power?
First, the policies of the previous regime must be examined to fully grasp the reasons for their failure. For instance, economic relations with corrupt Arab authorities must be changed. The freezing of Mubarak’s assets is a start, but this needs to be extended to the rest of the Arab ancien regime. Egypt has experienced steady economic growth over the past twenty years (pre-global financial recession), yet resource distribution has been seriously lacking. Nevertheless, Western government engagement with exploitative Arab regimes has rarely been subjected to external querying.
The acquiescent attitudes of the US and Europe in the face of fraudulent elections and brutal repression through much of the nineties and noughties must be reversed in this new era of protest politics. In a region where the slow unravelling of Arab authoritarianism has transformed the entire political system, a new foreign policy must be constructed in order to engage with this new Arab polity. Previous mistakes must not be repeated so that the next generation across the Arab world can move towards a real democratic transition away from authoritarianism towards good governance.
Gillian Kennedy is a PhD Candidate in Middle Eastern Studies at Kings College London.
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