Waking from its sleep A special report on the Arab world July 25th 2009

AArabrab world.inddworld.indd 1 114/7/094/7/09 10:03:1310:03:13 The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 1

Waking from its sleep Also in this section The world of the Arabs What do they have in common? Page 2

Imposing freedom Well, that didn’t work. Page 3

All change, no change Mountain above, volcano below. Page 5

How to stay in charge Not just coercion, sham democracy too. Page 7

The fever under the surface A silent social revolution. Page 9

Which way will they go? The Arab world has experienced two decades of political stagnation, A great struggle for ideas is under way in the says Peter David. But there is a fever under the surface Middle East. Page 13 N A special report on the Arab world They have seen plenty of history of the Iwhich The Economist published in 1990, wrong sort these past two decades. It in• the headline at the top of this page was cludes a good deal of violence: the Arab ŒWhen history passes by. That was when world has been caught up in wars both the communist dictatorships of eastern Eu• major and minor, not only between Arabs rope were beginning to wobble and fall. In and outsiders, such as those with Israel, the Arab world, however, authoritarian but also between, and within, Arab states. rule remained the order of the day. And Indeed 1990, the year Saddam invaded whereas western Europe was making mas• Kuwait, was something of a turning point. sive strides towards political and eco• America’s quick eviction of his army from nomic union, the Arabs remained woeful• the tiny oil state after only 100 hours of ly divided. Much Arab opinion remained ground †ghting looked at the time like a tri• †xated on the struggle with Israel, in umph. But a case can be made that this was which the Arabs seemed unable to hold in fact the starting•point of a whole sorry their own, let alone prevail. sequence of events encompassing the rise To revisit the Arab world two decades of al•Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s Septem• later is to †nd that in many ways history ber 11th strikes on the American mainland continues to pass the Arabs by. Freedom? and‹in Arab eyes‹America’s no less trau• The Arabs are ruled now, as they were matic invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 then, by a cartel of authoritarian regimes and Iraq in 2003 in its Œwar against terror. practised in the arts of oppression. Unity? Wars can happen anywhere. What As elusive as ever. Although the fault lines makes the Middle East especially prone to have changed since Saddam Hussein in• them? Just count the ways. First is oil. In the vaded Kuwait 19 years ago, inter•Arab divi• late 1990s Mr bin Laden wrote a letter to sions are bitter. Egypt, the biggest Arab Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Ta• country, refused even to attend April’s liban, in which he pointed out that 75% of Arab League summit meeting in Doha. Is• the world’s oil was found in the Persian rael? Punctuated by bouts of violence and Gulf region and that Œwhoever has domi• †tful interludes of diplomacy, the deadly nion over the oil has dominion over the A list of sources is at stalemate continues. Neither George H. economies of the world. So long as that Economist.com/specialreports Bush at Madrid in 1991 nor Bill Clinton at remains broadly true, the interests of ener• Camp David in 2000 nor George W. Bush gy•hungry powers from near and far will An audio interview with the author is at at Annapolis in 2007 succeeded in making continue to grind against each other there. Economist.com/audiovideo peace or even bringing it visibly closer. Second is the continuing and worsen• The stubborn con‡ict in Palestine is a ing Arab, and lately also Iranian, con‡ict More articles about the Arab world are at reminder that in some doleful ways his• with Israel. Since 1990 thousands more Economist.com/middleeast tory has not passed the Arabs by at all. Arab and Israeli lives have been thrown 1 2 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

2 into the maw of this voracious struggle‹in And yet if you put aside the Palestinians’ in 1991, when the army blocked a promis• the Palestinian intifada (uprising) that start• imaginary state, hardly any of the 21actual ing experiment in free elections that was ed after the collapse of Mr Clinton’s Camp states that belong to the Arab League can starting to unfold under President Chadli David peace summit in 2000, and in Isra• plausibly claim to be a genuine democra• Benjedid. After an opposition Islamist el’s ruthless mini•wars in Lebanon in 2006 cy. In the absence of democracy, Arab party won in the †rst round of parliamen• and in Gaza at the beginning of this year. states therefore rely to an extraordinary de• tary elections, the generals blocked the sec• The last and perhaps greatest underly• gree on repression in order to stay in pow• ond, and so detonated a gruesome civil ing cause of instability arises from the na• er. And from time to time this system of war that lasted almost a decade and may ture of the Arab states themselves. Elec• control breaks down. have killed 200,000 people. In the 1990s tions are widespread in the Arab world. A spectacular example came in Algeria internal terrorism stalked Egypt too: radi•1

The world of the Arabs What do they have in common?

ONVENIENT as it is to describe the 22 Arab. So, despite being Muslim, would an C countries (including the unborn Pal• Iraqi Kurd (though a Lebanese or Palestin• So whom are you calling an Arab? 1 estine) that belong to the Arab League as ian Christian would not be). Which of the following is your Œthe Arab world, the neat phrase can mis• If they are not an ethnic or a religious most important identity? lead. This is a heterogeneous agglomera• group, nor are the Arabs a language group. Citizen of Arab tion of some 350m people‹Maronites, Arabic is widely spoken in the Arab your country 32 Copts, Berbers, Kurds and Africans as well world, but so for that matter is French. 35 as Arabs and Muslims‹inhabiting a mis• And Arab dialects di er so much that a % cellany of lands from the Atlantic to the Syrian will struggle to understand the Ar• Citizen of the world Persian Gulf and from the Saharan desert abic of a Moroccan. Since most of the bor• 1 Muslim to the foothills of Anatolia. So all general• ders of the Arab world owe more to the 32 isations about the Arabs‹their experi• dispositions of European colonialists Source: Annual Arab Public Opinion Survey 2009, University of ences, instincts and styles of faith or poli• than to authentic national groupings, Maryland with Zogby International. Countries surveyed: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates tics‹should be treated with scepticism. some Arabs may think of themselves as Being Œan Arab is as slippery a notion Arabs †rst and Jordanians or Libyans sec• as being Œa European. These are loose ond. For an Egyptian it would probably be cumstances Sunnis and Shias still †ght re• identities, put on and taken o according the other way round. ligious wars against each other, as they re• to taste and circumstance (see chart 1). Islam is the dominant religion of the cently did in Iraq. Many a black Christian African living in Arab world, but most of the world’s Mus• Also in stark contrast to Europe, the the south of Sudan, a country that hap• lims are not Arabs. And although Islam Arab world has seen little formal integra• pens to be a member of the Arab League, gives Arabs a strong sense of fellowship, it tion. The United Arab Republic (UAR), would be astonished to be told he was an can be a dividing force too. In some cir• which Egypt and Syria formed in 1958, lasted only three years. Other regional ac• ronyms have come and sometimes acri• moniously gone. Thanks to Saddam’s in• vasion of Kuwait, the ACC (the Arab Co•operation Council of Egypt, Iraq, Jor• dan and North Yemen) survived only a year after its birth in 1989. The Arab Ma• ghreb Union has been a ‡op. The Gulf Co• operation Council (GCC), consisting of Saudi Arabia and its †ve Gulf satellites, has fared better. But this and other pro• jects have been held back by rivalries. As for the Arab League, it does little more than organise bad•tempered summits, fend o Western criticism of human• rights abuses by its members and de• nounce Israel. Al•Jazeera, the Arab world’s most popular television channel, does an in†nitely better job of providing the disparate Arabs with a sense of unity. The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 3

2 cal Islamist movements such as Islamic Ji• Take the contest over energy resources. had and the Jamaat Islamiya claimed more Geology is destiny 2 This stands little chance of abating at a than 1,000 lives. And although most of Proven world oil reserves, end 2008, % time when the energy appetites of China Egypt’s erstwhile jihadists have long since and India continue to grow and when a be• renounced violence, others‹notably Ay• Middle East and leaguered America and a rising Iran are North Africa* man al•Zawahiri, Mr bin Laden’s number 60.4 competing for domination of both the Le• two‹went on to found and lead al•Qaeda. Rest of vant and the Persian Gulf. As for Palestine, World world peace looked more achievable during the total: 39.6 Tribes with ‡ags 1.3 trn negotiations initiated by Yitzhak Rabin The political instability of the Arab world barrels and Yasser Arafat in the 1990s than it does is in turn connected to another problem: now, with Hamas and a Likud•led govern• the missing glue of nationhood. Many ment in Israel darkening hopes of a two• years ago an Egyptian diplomat, Tahsin Ba• state solution. In most Arab countries the Source: BP *Including Iran shir, called the new Arab states of the Mid• glue of nationhood is still weak: the sectar• dle East Œtribes with ‡ags (though he ex• ian con‡ict in Iraq may intensify again as empted Egypt). His point still holds. In been touched by the violence only America begins to withdraw its forces (and countries as di erent as Lebanon and Iraq, through their television screens (though, Shia•Sunni tensions have spread beyond ethnic, confessional or sectarian di er• as we shall see, the powerful emotions Iraq). Lastly, in almost any Arab country, at ences have thwarted programmes of na• such images stir up have real•world conse• almost any time, political and social dis• tion•building. That is why Iraq fell apart quences too). Many Arab countries can content is in danger of tipping into vio• into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish fragments look back over the past two decades and lence‹even, some insiders and outsiders after the removal of Saddam despite de• see elements of progress to be proud of, in• are beginning to argue, into revolution. 7 cades of patriotic indoctrination. Syria cluding, in some places, rising prosperity could follow suit if the minority Alawi sect and a slow but steady expansion of perso• of the ruling Assad family were somehow nal freedom. Two bloody decades 3 to lose control of this largely Sunni coun• And yet the years of con‡ict cannot just Conflicts in the Arab world since 1990 try. Sudan has seen not one but two civil be written o , as if the various outbreaks wars between its Arab•dominated centre of internal or inter•state violence were just Conflict Arab deaths and the non•Arab minorities in its south local aberrations or the product of bad Darfur (since 2003) 400,000 and west. luck, or as if they had no bearing on the re• Algerian civil war (1991-2002) 150,000-200,000 In reviewing this litany of troubles, it is gion’s future prospects. It is not just that, if Invasion of Iraq (since 2003) 101,000-109,000 necessary to remember that what people you add all the bloodletting together, up to Iraqi Shia rebellion 60,000-100,000 call Œthe Arab world is a big and amor• a million citizens of the Arab world may (1991-92) phous thing, and arguably (see box and have perished violently since 1990, and War for Kuwait (1990 & 1991) 24,000-31,000 map, previous page) not one thing at all. It that killing on this scale cannot but leave Second Palestinian intifada 5,500 would be a distortion to portray the whole deep scars (see table 3). The disturbing (2000-05) region as a zone of permanent con‡ict. point for the future is that none of the un• Gaza war (2009) 1,400 However bloody they have been, the wars derlying causes of con‡ict enumerated Lebanon war (2006) 1,200 in Iraq, Algeria, Sudan or on the borders of above has disappeared. On the contrary, Sources: Algerian government; British Council; B’T selem; Iraq Body Israel have not disrupted ordinary life in each appears to be taking on the character• Count; Kuwaiti government; Palestinian Centre for Human Rights; Project on Defense Alternatives; Reuters; UN the whole Arab world. Most Arabs have istics of a chronic condition. Imposing freedom

Well, that didn’t work

N THE month of June an attractive black For someone in her position to make ously supported, such as Egypt’s, to turn IAmerican politician visited a university such a speech in such a place was testimo• themselves into democracies. in Cairo and made an astonishing speech. ny to the huge impact the attacks of Sep• Four years on from Ms Rice’s speech, ŒFor 60 years, said the visitor, Œmy coun• tember 11th 2001 had on American think• the Bush administration’s dream that de• try, the United States, pursued stability at ing about the Middle East. The advent of mocracy could be imposed on the Arabs the expense of democracy in the Middle al•Qaeda persuaded the neoconservative by an outside force lies in tatters. Whatever East‹and we achieved neither. Now we ideologues of the Bush administration that becomes of Iraq in the longer term, the are taking a di erent course. We are sup• terrorism carried out in the name of Islam bright hope that the Americans’ removal porting the democratic aspirations of all was bred in part by the lack of democracy of Saddam might transform that country people. The year was 2005 and the orator and pluralism in the Arab world. Hence• into a democratic example for other Arabs was Condoleezza Rice, George Bush’s sec• forth America’s national interest lay in per• to follow has ‡ickered out. The invasion, retary of state. suading the autocratic regimes it had previ• and the civil war that followed it, killed far 1 4 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

2 too many Iraqis for anyone else in the re• period had to endure sti lectures on the †ce before he dies. (Mr Mubarak has re• gion to wish such a chaotic, bloody and de• importance of a free press. And so forth. fused to appoint a vice•president.) structive experiment on themselves. All this pressure irritated America’s Since the elections of 2005, moreover, The installation of democracy was nev• Arab friends. The kings, emirs and presi• the regime has cracked down hard on its er the main part of America’s motivation dents who depended on American aid, opponents. Ayman Nour, a secular politi• for unseating Saddam. The need to rid markets and military muscle had suddenly cian who dared to run against Mr Muba• America of an unpredictable enemy, sus• to talk the language of pluralism, knowing rak, was jailed for more than three years on pected plausibly of pursuing weapons of full well that the advent of real democracy questionable charges. The Bush adminis• mass destruction, loomed much larger in in their countries could swiftly put them tration complained loudly about his arrest, Mr Bush’s pre•war speeches and delibera• out of their jobs. Nonetheless, they consid• but he was released only this year, after Mr tions. His Œfreedom agenda came to the ered it prudent to bend a little. Bush himself had left oˆce. In May, shortly fore later, after it was discovered that the From Alexandria in 2004 a conference after announcing his willingness to stand much•hyped weapons did not exist. But of Arab politicians, intellectuals and civil• again, Mr Nour was injured in an attack he this later e ort to talk, bribe and bully society organisations, meeting under the blamed on the government. friendly Arab regimes into political reform auspices of Egypt’s president, issued a dec• The Muslim Brotherhood, likewise, has was serious. And the reasons for its failure, laration expressing support for democratic been punished heavily for its success in the even in the case of supposedly malleable reform, freer speech and human rights. Mr elections (though its candidates were al• American Œclients such as Egypt and Sau• Mubarak promised freer elections in 2005 lowed to run only as Œindependents). di Arabia, reveal a great deal about the im• and introduced a constitutional change to Many of its leaders have since been put un• mobility of Arab politics. make them possible. In that year’s parlia• der arrest. In 2007 new constitutional mentary elections the main opposition amendments banned political parties Drip, drip, drip movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, did with a religious orientation and increased The pressure Mr Bush put on the Arab re• strikingly well, taking a †fth of the seats in the extensive powers of the president. The gimes to embrace democracy was not bru• the People’s Assembly, the lower house, emergency laws under which Egypt has tal, but it was signi†cant. In 2002 the presi• and would probably have done better still been governed for most of the past half• dent spoke up in support of Saad Eddin but for heavy police interference on poll• century have been extended yet again. The Ibrahim, an Egyptian•American writer ing day. In 2005 Saudi Arabia held elec• government has stopped broadcasting and political activist who had been impris• tions (men only) for new local councils parliamentary debates or reporting them oned on what looked like trumped•up (though half the representatives were to be in the oˆcial newspapers. Essam el•Ary• charges. In 2005 Mr Bush called on Presi• appointed, not elected). an, a jovial though oft•jailed member of dent Hosni Mubarak to allow freer voting Still, cosmetic and procedural changes the Brotherhood, says police continue to in the Egyptian elections due that year. In such as these were not allowed to interfere mount repeated raids on members and to places where America wielded more di• for long with the stark realities of power. close down their businesses. rect in‡uence over events, such as post•in• Two months ago the Saudis announced vasion Iraq and, via Israel, the Palestinian that the second round of municipal elec• The wrong messengers territories, elections became the order of tions was going to be delayed by two years. Why did Mr Bush’s message of reform fail? the day. At America’s behest Iraqis went to In Egypt there was never any prospect of a One reason, a lot of Arab reformers say, is the polls three times in 2005: †rst for a Na• rival candidate being allowed to defeat Mr that he and his colleagues were‹or at least tional Assembly, then for a referendum on Mubarak, who has been president since became‹the worst possible messengers. a new constitution, and last to elect anoth• 1981. No Egyptian expects him to leave of• Thus Hossam Bahgat, founding director of 1 er National Assembly under the new con• stitution’s rules. To Israel’s astonishment, the Americans also advised letting Hamas contest the Palestinian elections of Janu• ary 2006, which the radical Islamist move• ment then disobligingly went on to win. It wasn’t all just scolding and nagging. Money spoke too. Mr Bush leant on the rich countries of the G8 to set up a Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, in• tended to promote democracy in the re• gion. In Washington, DC, the American taxpayer and federal bureaucracy were en• listed in the freedom agenda’s cause. Liz Cheney, a well•connected deputy assistant secretary at the State Department (her fa• ther was vice•president), created the Mid• dle East Partnership Initiative, a project that would use American grants and ad• vice to spread political and economic free• dom and women’s rights. Arab presidents who visited the White House during this Obama and Mubarak talked of respect, not freedom The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 5

2 a pressure group, the Egyptian Initiative for and not much appeased by the new presi• quent attempt by the new president to re• Personal Rights, admits to having been im• dent’s plan to withdraw. ŒThe Americans pair America’s relations with Islam and pressed and surprised when Ms Rice are the Mongols of the 21st century, he de• make America’s stance on Palestine look turned up at the American University in clares, Œand now Barack Obama is trying more even•handed in the eyes of Arabs. Cairo to say exactly what people like him to put the icing on this dirty cake. But in some ways this speech was less am• had been longing to hear: that there would Tamara Cofman Wittes, who followed bitious than Ms Rice’s of 2005. Like Ms be no more American support for dicta• the progress of the Bush administration’s Rice, Mr Obama extolled the virtues of de• tors. But when the American government democracy promotion in the Arab world mocracy. But this time he stressed the cru• then started to defend its own human• closely from her perch at the Brookings In• cial rider. ŒEach nation gives life to this rights abuses at Guantánamo and else• stitution in Washington, DC, says in a re• principle in its own way, grounded in the where, he felt disgusted. ŒWhat we learnt cent book (ŒFreedom’s Unsteady March, traditions of its own people, he said. from the Bush years was that reform was Brookings, 2008) that there were plenty of ŒAmerica does not presume to know what our own business, he says now. other ‡aws in the project’s design and exe• is best for everyone. In Arab eyes, the freedom agenda was cution. But underlying all of them was Nobody questions Mr Obama’s belief also tainted by the war in Iraq. How could America’s own ambivalence. Might push• in the democratic idea. He did not shrink in America claim to have Arab interests at ing reform too far estrange America’s allies Cairo from calling on rulers to govern by heart while laying waste to one of the Arab and damage its interests? And what if, in a consent, not coercion, and to respect the world’s biggest countries (and, cynical Ar• serious democratic contest, Arab voters rights of women and minorities. But it is abs add, the one most dangerous to Israel)? opted for radical Islamists hostile to the clear that under his presidency the United Consider the reaction of Nader Fergany, United States‹as Algerians seemed poised States will no longer be forcing its political an Egyptian academic, democracy advo• to do in 1991, and so many Palestinians and values down the throats of reluctant allies cate and author of a report published by Lebanese did when they cast their votes (or even, as in Iran, foes). ŒRespect has dis• the United Nations Development Pro• for Hamas and Hizbullah a decade and a placed Œfreedom as the word of choice in gramme the year before the American in• half later? America’s discourse with the Muslim vasion. The 2002 Arab Human Develop• world. That may be wise, from America’s ment Report was extraordinarily frank Cairo revisited own point of view, and welcome to the about the ‡aws and failures of the Arab Whatever the reasons for its failure, Mr Arab rulers, if not necessarily to the Arab world and the urgency of reform. Its au• Bush’s freedom agenda is now dead. In ruled. But the new approach leaves the thor is just the sort of person you might ex• June of this year it was the turn of Barack fundamental problem of political stagna• pect to have welcomed Mr Bush’s reform Obama to make a spellbinding speech at a tion in the Arab world unresolved. After e ort. But, like many Arab intellectuals, he university in Cairo. This speech will go all, if the outside world cannot bring it, is still fuming about the war six years on, down in the history books. It was an elo• change will have to come from within. 7 All change, no change

Mountain above, volcano below

MAGINE an Arab Rip Abu Winkle who business on the old man’s death: as in sounds and sociology of every corner of Ihad fallen into a deep slumber some Egypt, there is much talk of a favoured son the Arab world. Cairo burgeoned from 9m time in the early 1980s. If he woke up now, inheriting the †ef. souls in 1976 to a cacophonous 18m in he would rub his eyes in disbelief at how And yet an awakening sleeper would 2006. Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, hard• little had changed. be amazed not only by how little had ly a city at all 50 years ago, by 1990 had a Hosni Mubarak is still the president of changed in Arab politics but also by how population of more than 2m and today has Egypt, after a cool 28 years in the top job. In much had changed in Arab society. One 5m. By 2006 some 87% of Lebanese and Syria the grim reaper did for Hafez Assad shock would be the sheer press of human• 83% of Jordanians were living in cities. after a run of three decades as the coun• ity. By next year the region’s population If, to take this fable a bit further, Rip Abu try’s ruler, but his son, Bashar, has become will have doubled over 30 years‹from Winkle were a political scientist, he could president in his place. In Tunisia Zine al• fewer than 180m people to some 360m. He hardly fail to be disturbed by the contrast Abidine Ben Ali remains president after 22 might also be astonished by the youth of between the decades of political stagna• years. Ali Abdullah Saleh has been presi• so many of these people: the majority of tion on the one hand and the decades of dent of parts or all of Yemen for more than Arabs are under 25 years old. rapid social change on the other. At some 30 years. Jordan is still run by the Hashem• Our Rip Abu Winkle would not have to point, will the demands of all these young ite family, Morocco by the Alouite family, consult a book of statistics to †nd out people for jobs and prospects, together Saudi Arabia by the al•Sauds and Kuwait about the ballooning of this youthful pop• with the impact of mass education, global by the al•Sabahs. Muammar Qadda† has ulation. It is highly visible. That is because ideas and modern media, not mutate into been imposing his idiosyncratic brand of rapid population growth has coincided demands for a voice‹and then for the ŒIslamic socialism on Libyans since 1969. with a massive in‡ux into the cities from broader freedoms common in the rest of And like Syria, Libya may become a family the countryside, transforming the sights, the world? How much longer can systems 1 6 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

nutrition and child health. In a survey of wealth funds, many have looked after Recovering 4 Arab economies published in 2007 by the their †nancial assets far more prudently Oil price, West Texas Intermediate, $ per barrel Peterson Institute for International Eco• over this cycle than during previous bo• nomics, Marcus Noland and Howard Pack nanzas. As for the wider Arab world, what 150 reported that on fundamental social indi• in good times is a disadvantage‹the fact cators such as literacy, poverty and educa• that their economies and †nancial institu• 125 tion the Arab countries do as well as or bet• tions are weakly integrated into the global 100 ter than most other countries with similar economy‹is at present providing a mea• incomes. And within the Arab world there sure of shelter from the storm. 75 are vast regional discrepancies that limit 50 the value of generalisations. In 2002 The Too young Economist noted in a special report on the By far the biggest diˆculty facing the Ar• 25 Gulf states that the six desert monarchies abs‹and the main item in the catalogue of 0 since 1970 had trebled literacy levels to 75%, socio•economic woes submitted as evi• 19992000 2001 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 added 20 years to average life expectancy dence of looming upheaval‹is demogra• Source: Thomson Datastream and created a world•class infrastructure by phy. The population of the Arab world is spending a total of $2 trillion. Such e orts expected to grow some 40% over the next 2 of government based on personal authori• should be given their due. two decades. That amounts to almost tarian rule, or on the rule of a single party, Some of these gains are now threat• 150m additional people, the equivalent of dam up this rising tide of expectations? ened by the global economic downturn. two new Egypts. But Arab countries al• Predicting disaster in the Arab world The bursting of the property and tourism ready have the lowest employment rate in has become something of a cottage indus• bubble in the Gulf will have rami†cations the world and one of the highest rates of try. Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst throughout the region. Most of the migrant youth unemployment, with about one in now at the Brookings Institution, argued in workers in the Gulf states hail from Asia, †ve young people out of work. The medi• a book last year that the Arab world is but a lot are also sucked in from the poorer an age in the three most populous Arab ‡oundering in socio•economic problems Arab countries. They‹and Arabs working countries‹Egypt, Algeria and Morocco‹is so deep that almost every Arab country in Europe‹are now losing their jobs and 24, 26 and 26 respectively. Even before the can be considered to be in a Œpre•revolu• heading home, so families and home econ• downturn in energy prices and the world tionary condition. A recent book on Egypt omies are deprived of precious remit• economy, the prospects of creating enough is subtitled ŒThe Land of the Pharaohs on tances. The World Bank reckons that remit• jobs for all these young workers as they en• the Brink of Revolution. David Gardner, a tances make up about a †fth of GDP in ter the labour market looked remote. writer for the Financial Times, called his re• Lebanon and Jordan. Egypt will be hit too: It is not for want of trying. Arab govern• cent book on the region ŒLast Chance. an unknown number of Egyptians, but at ments are acutely aware that too much of least several million, live and work abroad, the growth in their economies has been The dark side many of them in the Gulf. driven by oil, property and tourism. They If you trawl through comparative global And yet the present downturn is not the know, and keep saying, that they need to economic and social statistics, it is not diˆ• Arabs’ main economic worry. If anything, address these imbalances. In June last year cult to paint a bleak picture of Arab failure, Arab countries are less vulnerable than Qatar published an ambitious economic based on a broad pattern of underperfor• other parts of the world. The energy pro• Œvision for 2030. At the beginning of this mance in investment, productivity, trade, ducers still have the cash windfall they col• year Abu Dhabi followed suit with a 2030 education, social development and even lected before oil prices tumbled‹and now vision document of its own. Grand strat• culture. The total manufacturing exports prices are rising again (see chart 4). Thanks egies such as these voice all the fashion• of the entire Arab world have recently to the advent of well•managed sovereign• able aspirations about improving skills, 1 been below those of the Philippines (with less than one•third the population) or Isra• el (with a population not much bigger than Now find them jobs 5 Riyadh’s). From 1980 to 2000 Saudi Arabia, Population by age, years, % of total, 2010 forecast Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, ARAB WORLD EUROPE Syria and Jordan between them registered 25 20 15 10 5 0 5 10 15 367 patents in the United States. Over the same period South Korea alone registered 80+ 16,328 and Israel 7,652. The number of 70-79 books translated into Arabic every year in 60-69 the entire Arab world is one•†fth the num• 50-59 ber translated by Greece into Greek. Comparisons like these need to be 40-49 treated with care. For millions of Arabs, liv• 30-39 ing conditions have improved rather than 20-29 deteriorated over recent decades. Indeed, 10-19 the starkest economic challenge Arabs 0-9 face‹a massive population bulge‹is itself the product of big strides in immunisation, Source: UN Population Division The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 7

2 freeing the labour market, shrinking the economies and authoritarian polities of which began in 2002 undid many of the role of the government and diversifying the Arab world. Sufyan Alissa of the World good intentions of the Gulf states. ahead of the day when the oil and gas will Bank points out that both the oil• and non• Until then they had been contemplat• eventually run out. But the governments oil states depend disproportionately on ing raising taxes and opening more of the have been saying this sort of thing for de• collecting rents‹if not from oil then in economy to competition in order to deal cades, and the results are decidedly mixed. some other form, such as remittances or with mounting budget de†cits. But the ris• Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in foreign aid or loans. Such rents, he argues, ing oil price allowed them once again to downstream energy activities, creating big are used to provide a temporary cushion avoid grasping the nettle of reform. Oil rev• industrial cities. Dubai, with relatively lit• against economic pressures, preserve the enues in 2006 contributed a bigger share tle oil and gas, seemed until the recent privileges of the elite and buy continued (86%) of government revenue in the GCC crash to have become a successful busi• loyalty to the state. At the same time re• countries than they did in 2002 (77%), and ness, shopping and tourism hub some• form is hampered by chronic weaknesses domestic taxes, on average, amounted to what like Singapore or Hong Kong. Kuwait in the government bureaucracy, defective less than 5% of GDP. pioneered the idea of safeguarding its own judicial systems, a lack of political transpa• It seems unlikely, then, that another economic future by becoming a long•term rency or accountability and the vested in• spike in the oil price will enable even those investor in the economies of others. Sven terests of those who bene†t from the exist• Arab countries that enjoy the mixed bless• Behrendt of the Carnegie Middle East Cen• ing arrangements. ing of hydrocarbons to create balanced tre in Beirut notes that the huge and in• economies capable of providing enough creasingly sophisticated sovereign•wealth Having it too good work for their fast•growing populations. funds of the Gulf states have for the †rst It follows that when rents increase, the in• Barring some miracle, a large proportion of time turned Arab countries into a big force centive to tackle underlying economic pro• Arabs now entering adulthood face hard in the world economy as strategic inves• blems diminishes. When oil prices are times and long periods of joblessness tors and not just as suppliers of oil. Some high, grumbles Ahmed Heikal of Citadel ahead, in societies that have systematical• of the countries that lack oil but are close to Capital, a private•equity group based in ly blocked peaceful, institutional avenues European markets and in‡uence, such as Egypt, governments become less enthusi• to political change. That is why so many Morocco and, especially, Tunisia, have be• astic about encouraging private invest• analysts conclude that something has to gun to create diversi†ed economies. ment. In a study for the Carnegie Middle give. Will the mass of Arabs continue to And yet economic reform, diˆcult any• East Centre, Ibrahim Saif, an economist, bite their lips and buckle under? Or is there where, is especially hard for the rentier notes that the long boom in oil prices a danger of an eruption? 7 How to stay in charge

Not just coercion, sham democracy too

LOT of the wounding comparative sta• corrects himself, Œthe party of the ruler) istrative behemoths is staggering. In 2007, Atistics trotted out to demonstrate the has no popular support and Œthe so•called he reckons, Egypt’s civil service was about backwardness of the Arabs appeared †rst legitimate opposition parties are essential• 7m strong, and as a proportion of their in the Arab Human Development Report ly dead corpses. population the Gulf oil producers’ public• of 2002. Its stark †ndings in‡uenced the Though the local details vary, most sector payroll is higher still. design of the Bush administration’s Mid• Arab regimes maintain their power in re• dle East Partnership Initiative. In the Arab markably similar ways. At the apex of the Elections galore, signifying nothing world itself the report owed its resonance system sits either a single authoritarian And yet, strange to say, one of the regimes’ to the fact that it was written not by West• ruler, be he a monarch or a president, or an most e ective instruments of control is the ern technocrats but by a team of Arab aca• ever•ruling party or royal family. The ruler elaborate system of democracy‹sham de• demics. The lead author was Nader Fer• is shored up by an extensive mukhabarat mocracy, that is‹they have devised in or• gany, encountered earlier in this report (intelligence service) employing a vast net• der to channel and contain political dis• berating the Americans as Œthe new Mon• work of informers. One retired Egyptian sent. Most Arab countries have gols of the Middle East. diplomat, speaking unattributably, puts parliaments and hold formal elections. In Now director of the Almishkat Centre the size of his own country’s internal•secu• recent years national constitutions have for Research and Training in Cairo, Mr Fer• rity apparatus at about 2m people. been earnestly revised, and then revised gany is no less furious with the Arab re• A second instrument of control is the again. The catch is that the parliaments gimes, which he accuses of doing every• government bureaucracy. With no rotation have few powers and the elections are thing in their power to obstruct democracy of power, Arab countries have blurred the rigged to ensure that the ruler or his party and social justice. In most Arab countries, distinction between ruler and state. Bloat• cannot be unseated. he says, the political order is oppressive ed civil services, says Brookings’s Mr Pol• The few half•exceptions merely prove and democracy a sham, a hollow system lack, provide the regimes with a way to dis• the rule. In May Kuwait made headlines incapable of accommodating the vitality pense patronage and pretend•jobs to mop when for the †rst time four women were of the people. Egypt’s ruling party (no, he up new graduates. The size of these admin• elected to parliament, a genuinely ram•1 8 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

services through the mosques. The secular parties have no such favours to dole out. Nor, in truth, do they have much ideologi• cal †re in their bellies. The causes that pro• pelled them in the glory days are either re• dundant (independence from colonial masters) or discredited (the pan•Arabism of Gamal Abdul Nasser or the Baathism of Syria and Iraq). Moreover, given a choice between the status quo and the uncertain future prom• ised by the Islamists, the instinct of such parties is to stick to the devils they know, however much it costs them at the polls. The 2005 election that delivered 20% of seats in Egypt’s parliament to the Muslim The gentler side of Kuwaiti politics Brotherhood gave a mere 5% to the four secular opposition parties. 2 bunctious institution. But Kuwait’s politics been so successful in Turkey. Indeed, Mo• Still, if the secular opposition parties limp from crisis to crisis because the ever• rocco has a long tradition of multi•party are weak, their Islamist rivals are not nec• ruling al•Sabah family refuses to let parlia• politics in which both secular and reli• essarily as lusty as they seem. In the 1970s, ment hold its senior members, such as the gious parties (though some of the latter are says Mr Hamzawy, they built up a Œmighty prime minister, to account. When it threat• banned) have been allowed to ‡ourish. In machinery of social services, providing ens to, the emir dissolves parliament or the Algeria, too, a rich array of serious•minded the needy with the practical help the re• government resigns. parties is allowed to compete for parlia• gimes seemed unable to deliver. More re• In Lebanon the election last month was mentary seats. cently Islamist parties have found them• an unrigged, hard•fought a air. But since Permission to be a contender, however, selves on the right side of the religious Lebanon is a system of confessional baron• should not be confused with an opportu• revival sweeping the Arab world. Even so, ies, no government wins full control of it nity to win, and still less to govern. For all the going is becoming harder. Arabs are through the ballot box. The strongest mili• Morocco’s long tradition of multi•party not becoming less pious, but the pious are tary force in Lebanon is not the national politics, it is the instincts of the king and beginning to question the point of partici• army but the militia run by Hizbullah, the machinations of his palace that ulti• pating in politics. which is part of the opposition. So the con• mately determine national policy. And in One reason for this is simple exhaus• vincing victory won by the pro•Western Algeria’s election earlier this year the fact tion. Exclusion from power begins to sap coalition led by Saad Hariri will not stop that †ve candidates ran against President the motivation of even the most ardent of Hizbullah from controlling large parts of Abdelaziz Boute‡ika did not stop him from parties. In countries such as Morocco, the country and having a big say in policy winning a third term with an entirely im• where the Islamists are permitted to com• towards Israel. plausible 90% of the vote. pete but never to win, voters are losing That said, Mr Fergany does the opposi• faith in the ability of the PJD to deliver tion parties of the Arab world an injustice Let’s all join together and fear Islam even the mild reforms it proposes, such as when he calls them Œcorpses. The Muslim If you are an autocrat but want to run a sys• more transparent and accountable govern• Brotherhood is a powerful force in Egypt, tem of sham democracy, it is a boon if the ment. In most Arab elections turnout is even if it is not allowed to contest elections opposition is divided. And so, in the Arab falling. And in Egypt and Jordan the Mus• openly. Arabs who take part in opposition world, it is. Islamist parties stand on one lim Brotherhood has had to endure unpre• politics have few illusions about their abil• side of the divide and secular ones on the dictable cycles of repression and inclusion ity ever to win power but hope that they other. In theory, your hold on power as the fears and whims of the regimes can in‡uence debate on the margins. Mah• would be weaker if there were a danger of change. Jordan’s King Abdullah has some• moud Abaza, the leader of Egypt’s venera• the secular and religious opposition join• times let Brotherhood members sit in cabi• ble liberal party, the Wafd, says that neither ing forces. But so far they have not, and for net and at other times moved against his organisation nor the ruling National a probably insurmountable reason: the them, occasionally by squashing the vital Democratic Party has any impact on legis• secular parties fear the Islamists more than social and charitable activities on which lation: laws are written by technicians and they dislike the present regimes. much of their popularity rests. the job of the parliament is to provide a By comparison with the regimes and Another problem for the Islamists is rubber•stamp. But he is proud of the role the Islamist movements, the secular oppo• that they, too, are prey to troubling ideolog• his party newspaper has played in provok• sition parties are at a particular disadvan• ical doubts. The PJD has debated endlessly ing debate about political reform. tage. Their awful dilemma is dissected in a what the ŒIslamist label should mean. In Besides, there are Arab countries with forthcoming book (ŒGetting to Pluralism, meetings with Western journalists its lead• livelier parties than Egypt’s. The Party for Carnegie Middle East Centre) by Amr ers sometimes disavow it altogether and Justice and Development (PJD) in Morocco Hamzawy and Marina Ottaway. The re• describe themselves as mildly pious social is a sophisticated movement with a large gimes, the authors point out, can o er their or liberal democrats. For some time now following and an aspiration to emulate the supporters the patronage of the state. The the Brotherhood in Egypt has been split AK, the moderately Islamist party that has Islamists can o er theirs charity and social over whether to stick to the simple, famil•1 The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 9

2 iar slogan that has served them so well, bringing to the fore a new brand of leaders est government job ever to have been †lled that ŒIslam is the solution, or to elaborate with a more modern outlook. In some by a woman. a more detailed political programme, con• cases it has. Morocco’s King Muhammad is In other cases, however, the passing of taining potentially divisive policies on eco• more of a moderniser than was his father, the torch to a new generation has brought nomic management, women’s rights and King Hassan. Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah, mainly disappointment. Jordan has not the rights of Egypt’s large Coptic Christian who eventually ascended the throne in become conspicuously more liberal under minority. The mildly Islamist ruling AK 2005 at the tender age of 80, has cautiously King Abdullah than it was under King Hus• party in Turkey is seen by the PJD as a mod• accelerated the careful reforms he initiated sein. When Bashar Assad, educated as an el to emulate but accused by the Brother• during his time as crown prince when his ophthalmologist in London and married hood of selling out. even older half•brother Fahd was king. to a Syrian born and raised in Britain, as• Beyond these ideological perplexities Earlier this year an administrative reshuf• sumed power in 2000 after the long reign the Islamists are hampered because, for all ‡e caused a ‡utter when Nora al•Fayez was of his ruthless father Hafez, he was greeted their popularity compared with both the appointed as a deputy minister, the high• by some in the West as an internet•savvy regimes and the secular opposition par• liberal reformer, promising a breath of ties, their popular support in the Arab fresh air. But an all•too•brief ŒDamascus world has a ceiling. On the basis of recent spring did not last long. election results, Mr Hamzawy puts this at At the beginning of 2001 more than about 20% of the electorate, with some evi• 1,000 Syrian activists signed a declaration dence from polls in Jordan and Morocco of calling for political reform and an end to a downward trend. In order to secure a ma• the state of emergency that has been in ef• jority, he argues, the Islamists need to form fect since 1963, ostensibly because of the alliances with secular movements. But con‡ict with Israel. The new president’s re• they are deterred from doing so by a mix• action was to take fright and have many of ture of arrogance and fear of diluting their the most prominent signatories arrested. simple message of adherence to the faith. In 2005 a few brave souls renewed their With the Islamists disdaining the secular demands in a ŒDamascus Declaration. opposition and the secular parties afraid This led to another crackdown. of the Islamists, the opposition in many In March this year President Assad did Arab countries has checkmated itself. at last hint that a cautious economic liber• alisation now under way in Syria might be From generation to generation accompanied by political changes, such as If opposition politics are stymied, what the creation of an upper house that would about change from within the regimes give a bigger voice to the opposition. But all themselves? One hope has been that the that, he added, would come about Œgradu• grip of authoritarian rulers would relax as ally, at our own pace. Will change at the power passed down the generations, Assad moves at his own pace leaders’ pace be fast enough? 7 The fever under the surface

A silent social revolution

RESIDENT ASSAD’S decision to nip the dar revolution. Within months (and with the border with Israel. And on April 6th Preform movement in the bud in 2005 the prodding of France and America) the 2008 a strike by textile workers in a city should not have surprised Syria’s cedar revolution forced Mr Assad to with• north of Cairo was joined by young activ• would•be democrats, for this was a mo• draw his army from Lebanon, after a stay ists and billowed into a cloud of protests ment of extreme danger to the regime. In• of 30 years. that spread across Egypt. ‡uential voices in Washington, DC, were The sort of people’s power on display Despairing of the possibility of change urging Mr Bush to †nish what he had start• in Lebanon in 2005 has not yet expressed from above, says Mr Fergany, Egyptians ed in Iraq by toppling Syria’s leadership itself on a similar scale anywhere else in from every social class except the pluto• too. And in neighbouring Lebanon, which the Arab world. All the same the habit of cratic clique at the heart of the regime are Syria had long treated as a vassal, the as• protest is gaining ground. Three years ago, taking their political and economic de• sassination of Ra†k Hariri, a popular for• in a stand•o between the government mands to their streets and workplaces. mer prime minister, had triggered massive and parliament over an electoral law, stu• ŒHardly a day passes without scores if not protests. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for dent demonstrators in Kuwait camped out hundreds of protests in di erent areas of Mr Hariri’s murder. Their spontaneous in front of the parliament. In the Sinai pen• the country, he claims. protests‹one of the biggest manifestations insula, Bedouin tribesmen demanding A spirit of Arab protest is also alive in of Œpeople’s power the Arab world had property rights from the Egyptian govern• the blogosphere. Like young Iranians, witnessed‹came to be known as the Œce• ment have staged embarrassing sit•ins on young Arabs are tuning into social•net•1 10 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

2 working sites such as Facebook, posting overthrow the shah, a man who had tried tor is changing the way Egypt is governed. videos on YouTube and writing blogs, recklessly to force his own version of secu• For the †rst time in decades, he says, the some of them with overtly political lar modernity on a complex, traditional private sector employs more people and themes. When Saudi Arabia sent a men• and devout society. Last month’s Iranian invests more in the economy than the gov• only team to the Beijing Olympics last year election caused a new eruption of popular ernment does. This is creating greater tran• Saudi women staged a protest and posted protest in Tehran. Nowhere in the Arab sparency: the government budget is nowa• images of it on the internet. To mark wom• world, where the system of state control days submitted for debate to the Shura en’s day in 2008, a courageous Saudi activ• tends to be more subtle and the regimes’ Council (parliament’s upper house), not ist, Wajeha al•Huwaider, used YouTube to opponents are divided, looks ripe for an just handed down from on high. Business post a video of herself breaking the law by upheaval of this sort. associations and chambers of commerce driving a car. Wael Abbas, an Egyptian are increasingly involved in public policy blogger, has used his site to publish video Green shoots of change in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Ku• footage showing the police beating up However, political revolution is one thing, wait. And an unprecedented number of protesters, torturing detainees and rigging social revolution another. If the prospect businessmen now sit in Arab parliaments. vote counts. Egypt’s April 6th movement of the †rst looks far•fetched, the second is In Egypt’s (with 454 elected seats, includ• started life as a Facebook page. Mr Abaza already in train in every Arab society. Fer• ing ten presidential appointees) the num• of Egypt’s Wafd party says that the Islam• tility is in decline. More people, especially ber grew from 37 in the †ve•year term start• ists already had their network of mosques women, are becoming educated. A young ing in 1995 to 68 in the term starting in 2005. but that the web is now giving young liber• labour force has new aspirations. Arabs Since the parliaments the businessmen als a network too. know far more than they ever used to are joining are pretty toothless a airs, it Still, these are slender straws from about the world and about each other, would be wrong to make extravagant which to construct a claim that the Arab thanks to a transformation in the region’s claims for changes like this. Business• world is in a Œpre•revolutionary condi• media spearheaded by satellite television. people do not enter politics in order to an• tion. ŒThere is something taking place, it’s Private investors and entrepreneurs are tagonise the governments on whose pa• new, it’s interesting‹but from there to see playing a growing role in economies that tronage, permissions, licences and other revolution? No. So says one Cairo•based used to be dominated by the state. Taken favours they depend. ŒNo politics‹that is social scientist, requesting anonymity. together, all this has produced what Ah• my golden rule, was the telling opening The lot of young people in the Arab med Galal, a distinguished economist and remark of one businessman interviewed world may be diˆcult, but their woes managing director of the Cairo•based Eco• for this special report. Even the few who do should not be exaggerated. In global sur• nomic Research Forum, calls Œa fever un• speak out on politics tend to emphasise the veys young Arabs turn out to be relatively der the surface. need for Œmodernisation: of procedures, optimistic about the future. The frustra• Though none may be a game•changer regulations, education and training. That is tions they experience as they turn into on its own, all these in‡uences have politi• hardly the same thing as political reform. adults‹notably the years of Œwaithood cal consequences of some kind. For exam• Nonetheless, the expanding role of busi• that are typical before they †nd jobs and, ple, Abdel Monem Said Aly, director of the ness means that the circle of consultation therefore, before they can marry and enjoy Al Ahram Centre in Cairo, believes that the and decision•making has grown beyond sex (premarital relations are taboo in much growing economic role of the private sec• the coterie that used to call the shots. 1 of the Arab world)‹are hardly the stu of which political revolutions are generally made. Though some young people may look to politics to redress their grievances, the response of many is merely to retreat into the private sphere. Moreover, such protests as have taken place have been easy to snu out. When the Egyptian movement inspired by the April 6th 2008 protests tried to organise a follow•up Œday of anger on the same date this year, the e ort †zzled. Pre•emptive ar• rests and a massive police presence kept would•be demonstrators at home. As for the blogosphere, internet pene• tration in the Arab world is low by global standards (and compared with Iran), and bloggers are all too easy to identify and in• timidate. In April an Egyptian blogger, Ah• med Mohsen, was detained on the Orwell• ian charge of Œexploiting the democratic climate to overthrow the government. The last popular revolution in the Mid• dle East took place in 1979 in Iran, after lib• eral, left and Islamist forces combined to Inculcating the habit of protest The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 11

2 A far greater change over the past two decades is that Arabs today enjoy unprece• dented access to information and, espe• cially, debate. Even as late as the early 1990s, watching television in the Arab world was a dispiriting business. What passed for coverage of news and current a airs was solemn footage of presidents and emirs receiving visitors and cutting ribbons at oˆcial events. All this changed utterly after 1996 when the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Kha• lifa, established the al•Jazeera television station in his capital, Doha. In return for choosing not to dwell overmuch on the blemishes of Qatar itself, the new station was allowed to broadcast proper, hard•hit• ting news from everywhere else in the Arab world. With a sta of zealous jour• The power of al•Jazeera nalists, many of them Palestinians, it went on to do so with gusto and quickly Then again, Palestine is the uniting and world. It did this even though many Arabs, spawned many imitators and competitors. almost sacred cause of the Arab world. If reformers included, remain deeply you judge al•Jazeera by the rest of its cover• shocked by al•Jazeera’s now well•estab• Cognitive anarchy age, a di erent picture emerges. In 2006 Mr lished practice of letting Israelis appear on After 1996, says Wadah Khanfar, al•Ja• Lynch published a study of the station’s re• its shows. zeera’s (Palestinian) director•general, porting of Iraq since the late 1990s (ŒVoices Where broadcasting has led, the Œeverything exploded; the Arab world en• of the New Arab Public, Columbia). Like printed press has followed. The meek oˆ• tered a period of Œcognitive anarchy. The Palestine, Iraq is a story that has gripped cial newspapers that used to have the †eld consequence of it all, in the view of Marc and preoccupied Arabs everywhere. But to themselves are facing new and more Lynch, an academic at George Washington on this one they have not formed a single outspoken private competitors. Even the University in Washington, DC, has been view. His conclusion is that al•Jazeera re• most authoritarian regimes accept that it is the birth of Œa new Arab public. After the ‡ected all sides of the bitter arguments that no longer possible to suppress all informa• al•Jazeera phenomenon, he thinks, Arabs divided Arabs over issues such as the be• tion and sti‡e every criticism. Sarah Leah will no longer put up with the old tradition haviour of Saddam, the Western sanc• Whitson, Middle East and North Africa di• of enforced public consensus. They are tions, the American invasion and the legiti• rector at Human Rights Watch, a monitor• making their leaders explain and justify macy‹or not‹of the Iraqi government ing group based in New York, returned themselves as never before. And although that followed. Both al•Jazeera and its rivals from a recent visit to Libya reporting the it is no substitute for a proper electoral de• provided detailed and enthusiastic cover• stirrings of a new glasnost. Although the re• mocracy, this is building the underpin• age of the Iraqi elections of 2005, despite gime remains †rmly in control, new news• nings of a new kind of pluralist politics the conviction of many Arabs outside the papers were being allowed to nibble away Œrooted in a vocal, critical public sphere. country that a vote held under American at sensitive subjects, with one carrying Its many critics would be surprised to occupation had to be bogus. pages of editorials exposing bureaucratic hear that al•Jazeera was a force for pro• Moreover, this open•minded approach misconduct and corruption. gress. The station’s screening of the hate to reporting and analysis did not apply Naturally, such freedoms have their videos Osama bin Laden smuggles out of only to Iraq and its vicissitudes. From 2003 carefully circumscribed limits. Al•Jazeera hiding is controversial. So‹in the West‹is onwards al•Jazeera’s reporters and talk• and al•Arabiya are careful not to antago• the vehemence of its support for the Pales• show hosts put themselves at the heart of nise their respective Qatari and Saudi tinian cause. During Israel’s Gaza war this the American•initiated debate about polit• sponsors. They are vulnerable to high year al•Jazeera broadcast the sort of uned• ical reform in the Arab world. Arab politics: al•Jazeera has recently been ited footage that most stations deem too The station looked closely at the G8’s muting its criticism of Saudi Arabia, proba• gruesome to air. Even in times of relative American•inspired Greater Middle East bly at the behest of the Qatari royal family. calm its Arabic•language coverage (the Initiative, giving airtime to American as Moreover, there is always a danger that English channel is milder) of the con‡ict is well as Arab talking heads. In one online freedoms extended at the whim of a ruler relentless and partisan. Unlike al•Arabiya, al•Jazeera poll in 2003, 84% of viewers said can be withdrawn. its Saudi•sponsored rival, it makes little ef• that Arab governments were neither sin• The Syrian Media Centre, a private fort to cover Palestine in a manner a West• cere about reform nor capable of bringing monitoring organisation, told Reuters in ern audience would consider balanced. To it about. When President Bush said he had May that the Syrian authorities blocked some degree Mr Khanfar acknowledges been inspired by reading a book on de• 225 internet sites in 2008, up from 159 in this. His journalists are professional, he in• mocracy by Natan Sharansky, an Israeli 2007. They included several Arab newspa• sists, but there is a limit to how far the sta• politician (and former Soviet dissident), al• pers and portals, Amazon, Facebook and tion can o end Œthe strongest collective Jazeera interviewed the author and asked YouTube. In April Human Rights Watch feelings of the Arab world. him how his book might apply to the Arab noted that a new media law pending in the1 12 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

2 United Arab Emirates would tighten re• media have created a vast audience for attacking the prerogatives or legitimacy of strictions on media freedom. And the edi• Shia †rebrands like Hassan Nasrallah, the the Arab regimes. They do not form politi• tor of a Qatari newspaper, speaking pri• secretary•general of Hizbullah, and Sunni cal organisations, yet they are organised: vately, told The Economist that laws were radicals like Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, a Qa• when last year hundreds of people were anyway not the main impediment to press tar•based preacher who may not be a jiha• buried under a rock slide in Cairo, com• freedom in his country. What checked his dist but is no liberal either. In some Arab mentators observed that Sala†st groups pen was the certainty of social exclusion if countries, indeed, democracy and liberal• were quicker than the Brotherhood to help he o ended the establishment. ism push in opposite directions. There are the smitten. Another change with implications for places where the lot of women has deteri• politics is that the new Arab public now orated precisely because the regimes have Politics by stealth tuning into stations like al•Jazeera is better felt the need to pay more heed to the social Because they do not usually criticise the re• educated than ever before. Over the past conservatism of the Islamist opposition. gimes, the apolitical Sala†sts are tolerated †ve years, reckons Vincent Romani in a pa• Another mistake is to exaggerate the de• by the security services and so enjoy an ad• per for the Crown Centre for Middle East gree to which Arabs want to participate in vantage in spreading their message. They Studies at America’s Brandeis University, also have ample funds. Although the Saudi the GCC countries have spent at least $50 government denies giving active support billion on higher education in an e ort to to such groups, much of their inspiration, buy these traditional societies a place in as well as generous amounts of private‹ the global knowledge economy. Qatar has and princely‹money, seems to come from attracted half a dozen American and two Saudi Arabia. Egyptians remark that a lot Australian universities to its Education of their countrymen who spend a few City in Doha; Dubai’s International Aca• years working in Saudi Arabia return demic City houses branches of 32 foreign home as devout Sala†sts. universities; and Saudi Arabia’s King Abd• Personal religious choices such as these ullah University of Science and Technol• are not directly political, but the sum of ogy is due to open later this year with a these choices in‡uences the trajectory of personal royal endowment of $10 billion. the Arab world. Extreme social conserva• These are huge investments, even if tives, obsessed with ritual, purity and of• their concentration in one rich corner of ten sex, the Sala†sts are unfriendly to liber• the Arab world will limit their impact. Cit• al causes such as female emancipation. adel Capital’s Ahmed Heikal says that Moreover, there is reason to wonder how such e orts need to be replicated through• long their present quietism will last. Is• out the region. ŒIn an area of our size we sandr el Amrani, an independent analyst, cannot have a single centre for excellence calls them Œincipiently tak†ri. Like al• in education, he says. So far, however, Qaeda, in other words, they tend to regard higher education in the Arab world at large those Muslims whose practice of the faith has produced few critical minds. Most falls short of their own exacting standards Arab universities are victims of Œmassi†ca• A place in the knowledge economy as tak†r‹unbelievers or even apostates. tion: Egypt shoves 30% of the relevant age Experience suggests that this sort of intol• group into university, of whom fewer than politics at all. For the most part this re• erance can all too easily give rise to politi• half graduate. Outside the private sector mains a minority sport. Some of the most cal violence. standards are abysmal. signi†cant trends among Arabs are there• In the eyes of the regimes, Islam itself is fore not captured by political analysis. And a potential danger, because it is a source of Liberals and conservatives those who stay silently out of politics are authority and wellspring of action which If the Œfever under the surface does even• not all secular liberals waiting for times to the media revolution has put beyond the tually transform Arab politics and society, change. A growing pattern is for Arabs control of governments. Religious fervour what direction will the change take? It is a with strong and even extreme religious is growing among Arabs at a time when mistake to assume that trends such as ideals to eschew long•established political venerable religious institutions with the greater media freedom push invariably in movements, such as the Brotherhood, and imprimatur of governments, such as Al• a liberal direction. On the contrary, Arab devote themselves to personal lives of ex• Azhar in Cairo, are no longer able to lay conservatives have a record of exploiting treme piety, a phenomenon that has come down doctrinal law and command auto• new communications technology at least to be labelled Œapolitical or sometimes matic obedience. Access to the airwaves as well as liberals, and often better. Œscienti†c Sala†sm. and the internet has democratised Islam, Well before the advent of the internet, The Sala†st movement champions a re• forcing rival interpreters of the faith to radical imams made brilliant use of video• turn to the pure Islamic traditions prac• compete on their own merits for an audi• cassettes to spread their teachings, drown• tised by Muhammad and his contempo• ence that crosses sects and borders. And ing out the sermons of milder clerics. The raries at the time of Islam’s birth (the this cacophony inside Islam is itself part of Muslim Brothers, especially the younger al•Salaf al•Salih are Œthe pious forefa• a wider, and surprising, paradox of today’s ones, are active bloggers. And the mes• thers). Like al•Qaeda, the apolitical Sala• Arab world, which is that, behind the stag• sages being pumped into the airwaves by †sts adhere to a Utopian vision of Islam nation of its formal politics, it is engaged in satellite television stations are by no mastering the world. But they do not pur• a †erce and potentially history•altering means all congenial to the West. The new sue jihad against the West and refrain from battle of ideas. 7 The Economist July 25th 2009 A special report on the Arab world 13

Which way will they go?

A great struggle for ideas is under way in the Middle East

HE Arab world is more or less a vi• tige into a dizzying fall. It also created an fered a terrible beating in the sands of Iraq, ŒTcious circle. None of its problems opening for Iran, another non•Arab power but so in the end did Osama bin Laden’s as will be solved soon. All these troubles with vital interests in the region, to pro• the Arab public, Sunni as well as Shia, re• have the capacity to reinvent themselves. mote its own ambitions. coiled from al•Qaeda’s atrocities, which So says Ali al•Din Hillal Dessouki, a former Given the opacity of Iran’s politics, the killed more Muslims than in†dels. minister and senior †gure in Egypt’s ruling extent of those ambitions is hard to fath• The waning of al•Qaeda’s star does not party. This special report opened by argu• om. Some Iran•watchers fear that the mean that Islam itself is losing its potency ing that the causes of con‡ict in the Arab country aspires to ful†l the vision of Aya• in Arab politics. For millions of Arabs it world‹the competition for energy, the tollah Khomeini, its revolution’s founder, goes without saying that the faith should con‡ict with Israel, the weakness of Arab and export a brand of theocratic govern• have the main or even †nal say in the or• statehood and the stagnation of politics‹ ment to its Arab neighbours. But an equal• dering of society. But in the Sunni world are taking on the characteristics of a chron• ly plausible counter•argument is that Iran political Islam comes in a bewildering ic condition. But they are not just chronic. is motivated by insecurity rather than am• variety of forms. Shia thinking on the po• They are also connected to each other, and bition, seeks only to secure its rightful litical role of Islam is divided, too. In Iraq, self•reinforcing. place in the region and is therefore suscep• the only large Arab country where Shias One cause of Arab woes is the interfer• tible to the overtures of a President Obama outnumber Sunnis, the Shia religious es• ence of outsiders. The end of colonialism who has abandoned the re‡exive antago• tablishment has not embraced the Iranian in the mid•20th century did not leave the nism of the Bush years. Or it is possible, in idea, invented by Ayatollah Khomeini, of Arabs free from external meddling. During light of the recent upheaval, that both setting a supreme Islamic jurist above the the cold war, anxiety about the vulnerabil• points of view are represented within the elected leadership of the state. ity of oil†elds sundered the region into regime and that neither has yet prevailed. American and Soviet camps, and the cold For as long as this riddle remains unan• The opium of the Arabs war’s end brought the briefest of respites. swered, the eastern part at least of the Arab With a world of alternatives to choose At present at least four non•Arab powers‹ world seems condemned to remain an are• from‹authoritarianism, democracy, secu• America, Israel, Iran and to a much lesser na of rivalry between America and Iran. larism, di erent brands of Islamism‹it is a degree Turkey‹play an active part both in And like the cold war, this struggle has an pity that Arab perceptions are overshad• shaping relations between the Arab states ideological dimension. Arabs may be ex• owed by one issue that ought in principle and in‡uencing their internal politics. cluded from participation in real politics at to have nothing to do with the way they Even after its chastening experience in home, but Mr Lynch’s Œnew Arab public, are governed. This is Israel. Egypt and Jor• Iraq, the strongest of these is America. The forged by the al•Jazeera phenomenon, can• dan have made peace with Israel but the superpower that once saw its strategic role not but be vicarious participants in this ar• con‡ict shows no sign of abating. Thanks in the region as an Œo shore balancer has gument between great powers. in part to al•Jazeera, it looms larger than since the Gulf war of 1991 been very much Which way the majority will eventual• ever in Arab minds (see chart 6), and this onshore, with bases in the Persian Gulf ly turn is impossible to say. For the present, distorts the internal Arab debate about and, for the time being still, a large army al•Qaeda’s vision of endless war against politics and government. and air force in Iraq. America continues to the West and a return to the simple verities One country that has understood this have a vital interest in the region’s oil and of Islam’s †rst century appears to have lost well is Iran. Far from the front line, with remains the chief armourer and presumed the glamour it acquired after the felling of none of its own interests directly at stake, protector of Saudi Arabia and its GCC the twin towers. America’s reputation suf• Iran has turned the Palestinian con‡ict into neighbours. Because America is also Isra• a tool against America’s Arab allies. By el’s great defender, American policies have ramping up its words and deeds against a sharp impact on all the Arab states a ect• The one uniting cause 6 the ŒZionist regime and taunting the Arab ed by the Palestine con‡ict, on the fate of How important is the Palestinian governments for their relative pusillanimi• the Palestinians themselves and on the in• issue in your priorities? ty, Iran reaches over the heads of the Arab ternal standing of regimes that are seen as leaders directly to the passions of the American allies or dependants. Most In top 3 street. This is desperately uncomfortable important priorities However, America’s brief moment of 38 38 for the pro•American regimes. Lacking the unchallenged dominance, ushered in by % legitimacy democracy might confer, they the collapse of the Soviet Union and rightly dread being branded as appeasers sealed by the ease with which the †rst Not in top 5 In top 5 who have sold out the Palestinians at the priorities priorities President Bush summoned a grand region• 1 23 behest of a resented superpower. al coalition (Syria included) against Iraq in Source: Annual Arab Public Opinion Survey 2009, University of The job of the Arab moderates was 1991, did not last for long. The younger Pres• Maryland with Zogby International. Countries surveyed: Egypt, made all the harder by Israel’s recent wars Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates ident Bush’s invasion sent American pres• in Gaza and Lebanon. Shocking television 1 14 A special report on the Arab world The Economist July 25th 2009

2 footage transformed both of these local †ghts into moments of pan•Arab and even pan•Muslim rage. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which on both occasions made it too clear for too long that they would not mind seeing Iran’s allies in Hizbullah and Hamas take a beating at Israel’s hands, had to pay a heavy price in public opinion. Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a political scien• tist at the American University of Beirut, takes an extreme view of the conse• quences of the two wars. In their wake, she says, many Arabs have come permanently to reject the very idea of peaceful coexis• tence with Israel. More: this con‡ict now The Hizbullah factor eclipses familiar internal quarrels be• tween secular and religious, Sunni and month, and forcefully reiterating his pro• out by the calls for Œresistance. Shia or left and right. Arabs, she says, are mise to withdraw America’s armies from And then? In a much•noticed essay in judging their leaders less on their demo• Iraq, Mr Obama plainly hopes to open 2004, Sadik Al•Azm, a professor of philos• cratic credentials or domestic behaviour cracks in the resistance front. It may be no ophy at the University of Damascus, said and more by their will and capacity to Œre• coincidence that within a week of his big the modern Arabs had become Œthe Ham• sist Israel and America. That is why, in Cairo speech Lebanese voters re•elected a let of our times, doomed to unrelieved Lebanon and beyond, Hizbullah is ad• pro•American government and withheld tragedy, forever hesitating, procrastinating mired even by its enemies for having victory from a coalition led by Hizbullah. and wavering between the old and the fought Israel to a standstill in 2006. Ms new. Mr Dessouki, the former minister, Ghorayeb sees Hizbullah as a state within Come the revolution? says that the advocates of democracy in a non•state‹Œa microcosm of the success• The failure of Mr Bush’s freedom agenda the Arab world Œare not willing to pay the ful Arab state we haven’t seen anywhere suggests that no amount of American soft price of change. else in the Arab world: eˆcient, uncorrupt• power is going to persuade the regimes to That seems too bleak. The Arab world ed and self•suˆcient. embrace democracy. The presidents, kings faces chronic problems, but its people are For more than a year this notion‹that and emirs know that this could cost them no longer docile or passive. They are start• the Arabs are divided by an internal cold their jobs. And as this special report has ar• ing to speak out, to strike, even to take to war between a Œresistance front spon• gued, it is far from clear what sort of future the streets in pursuit of their demands. But sored by Iran and a Œmoderate front spon• Arabs would opt for if they had a free a revolution? ŒYou need an occasion for a sored by America‹has been the prevailing choice. After all, the ultra•conservative revolution, notes Paul Salem, director of conventional wisdom. But how long, espe• Saudi royals may well be more liberal than the Carnegie Centre in Beirut. ŒThe volca• cially after Iran’s recent internal upheavals, the ultra•conservative Saudi people. Per• no is there, but it is held in place by the will it continue to be true? haps the best to hope for is that a rebal• heavy mountain of the Arab state, which Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian columnist anced American diplomacy will draw oppresses its people very well and has who writes from New York, calls Israel some poison from Palestine and Iraq and learned how to play the game of elec• Œthe opium of the Arabs: an intoxicating prevent the case for reform being drowned tions. Will change come? Some day. 7 way for them to forget their own failings, or at least blame them on someone else. O er to readers Arab leaders have long practice of using Is• Future special reports Reprints of this special report are available at a Countries and regions rael as a pretext for maintaining states of price of £3.50 plus postage and packing. Indonesia September 12th emergency at home and putting o re• A minimum order of †ve copies is required. China and America October 24th form. At a meeting in Amman in 2005, Corporate o er when an American oˆcial suggested that Customisation options on corporate orders of 100 Business, †nance, economics and ideas it was time for an Arab democratic spring, or more are available. Please contact us to discuss Telecoms September 26th the Pavlovian response of Amr Moussa, your requirements. The world economy October 3rd secretary•general of the Arab League, was Business and †nance in Brazil November 14th Send all orders to: this: ŒThere will be no spring or autumn or The art market November 28th winter or summer without solving the Pal• The Rights and Syndication Department estine problem. We want our friends in the 26 Red Lion Square WC1R 4HQ United States to know that this is the con• London Tel +44 (0)20 7576 8148 sensus in the region. Fax +44 (0)20 7576 8492 How disconcerting, then, must be the e•mail: [email protected] advent of an American president who shows signs of heeding Arab complaints. For more information and to order special reports Previous special reports and a list of By expressing impatience with Israel and and reprints online, please visit our website forthcoming ones can be found online empathy for theŒintolerable plight of the Economist.com/rights Economist.com/specialreports Palestinians in his speech in Cairo last