Understanding Today's Middle East: Peoples & Places of the Arab Spring
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Understanding Today’s Middle East: Peoples & Places of the Arab Spring Edited by Denis J. Sullivan and Sarah A. Tobin Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies UNDERSTANDING TODAY’S MIDDLE EAST PEOPLES & PLACES OF THE ARAB SPRING Edited by Denis J. Sullivan and Sarah A. Tobin BOSTON CONSORTIUM FOR ARAB REGION STUDIES (BCARS) BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS SEPTEMBER 2014 UNDERSTANDING TODAY’S MIDDLE EAST: PEOPLES & PLACES OF THE ARAB SPRING Selected Papers From the 2014 BCARS Graduate Student Conference BCARS DIRECTOR Denis J. Sullivan, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Co-director of the Middle East Center at Northeastern University BCARS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND CARNEGIE VISITING SCHOLAR Sarah A. Tobin Associate Editor: Jaime L. Jarvis Design: Emily K. Hagen Production Support: Farhana Hussain BOSTON CONSORTIUM FOR ARAB REGION STUDIES 201 Renaissance Park • 360 Huntington Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 northeastern.edu/bcars With support from Carnegie Corporation of New York (http://carnegie.org), the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies (BCARS) is a partnership among the American University of Beirut (Issam Fares Institute), the American University in Cairo, Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern University, University of Massachusetts-Boston, and the Fletcher School at Tufts University. The Consortium brings together scholars and policy analysts—both faculty and graduate students—to promote greater understanding of the Arab Awakening and the Arab region as a whole. © 2014, Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies. Authors retain full scholarly rights to their original work. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie Corporation of New York, BCARS, or its partners. Sharing is encouraged; however, we ask that you give credit, and that you let us know when and how. Photos are used with permission or under the terms of their Creative Commons licenses (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses). Cover (left column, top to bottom): Untitled photo by Amine GHRABI (https://flic.kr/p/brLQ1q, CC BY-NC 2.0); “Tahrir Square” by Aschevogel (https://flic.kr/p/9kXYcM, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0), “Spirit of Revolution” by Denis J. Sullivan. Cover (right column, top to bottom): “Fear the Rise and the Fall” by Almond Dhukka (https://flic.kr/p/9ixjKk, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0); “Boy with Egyptian Flag Face-Paint” by Denis J. Sullivan. Morocco (top to bottom): “A friendly Berber man” by Brad Hammonds (https://flic.kr/p/jdSxr5; CC BY-NC 2.0); “‘Arab Spring’ takes toll on Moroccan economy” by Magharebia (https://flic.kr/p/9T58r9, CC BY 2.0); “Berber Girl” by ExpeditionMedicine (https://flic.kr/p/PhkWZ; CC BY-NC 2.0). Tunisia and Egypt (top to bottom): “Tunisie t’es Libre” by Gwenael Piaser (https://flic.kr/p/9aCPie, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); “Egypt’s Parliamentary Elections” by Jonathan Raschad (https://flic.kr/p/bm198M, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); “Power to the People” by Denis J. Sullivan. Syria and Lebanon (top to bottom): “Ahmad holds his son Mouath” by Dominic Chavez/World Bank (https://flic.kr/p/nxJcA7, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0); Untitled photo by Freedom House (https://flic.kr/p/bnUUs1, CC BY 2.0); “Syrian Refugees Face an Uncertain Future” by Mohamed Asakir/World Bank (https://flic.kr/p/jqC71b, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). ISBN-10: 0990826600 ISBN-13: 978-0-9908266-0-6 CONTENTS FOREWORD iv MOROCCO M. Chloe Mulderig | New Constitution, Old Tricks: Moroccan Exceptionalism During the Arab Spring **Best Paper** 2 Eliza Berg | Everyday Uprisings: Women’s Rights Activism in Morocco **Honorable Mention** 8 TUNISIA AND EGYPT Erica Kenney | More Than Free Elections: Divergent Paths of Transition in Tunisia and Egypt 18 Sarah Detzner | The Muslim Brotherhood’s Remarkable Trinity: Organizational Survival and Adaptation 28 Louise Klann | Who Is Moderating? Pre-uprising Dissent and Difference in The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: A Model for National Leadership? 39 SYRIA AND LEBANON Emily Cury | Strategies for Survival: The Syrian Regime’s Construction of Social Legitimacy 50 Rima Rassi | Struggling to Cope: The Syrian Refugee Crisis and Its Impact on Lebanon 58 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 67 2014 CONFERENCE OVERVIEW 69 FOREWORD Scholars of the Arab World carry out their research in an atmosphere of near-constant change, particularly since the uprisings known as the “Arab Awakening” or “Arab Spring.” The political, social, and cultural changes that seized the world’s attention in 2011 have continued to evolve, with important impacts on the Middle East and North Africa—indeed, on the world. All this change, however, remains largely inscrutable for many in the United States and beyond. This is why BCARS was founded. The mission of the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies is to create an international forum where scholars from Boston and Arab institutions can meet and work collaboratively to advance research and policy, strengthen a scholarly community, and mentor the next generation of scholars and policy analysts. In April 2014, our first Graduate Student Conference brought together nineteen emerging scholars whose research is exploring “today’s Middle East.” The conference sought to illuminate why the uprisings took place where and when they did, what impact external actors had (and continue to have) on the Arab Spring, and whose voices are being heard—or lost—as events continue to evolve and unfold. We are proud to present the work of seven of these scholars here. Although it is always challenging to weigh one scholarly work against another—we wish we could include them all—these seven papers emerged with well-crafted arguments backed by strong understanding of the literature, and grounded in the region’s history and current events. In sharing their insights into issues of individual and national identity, political upheaval and change, and international impact related to the events of 2011 and beyond, the authors are seeking to do what our conference keynote speaker, Dr. Shadi Hamid, describes as his own goal in the opening pages of his book, Temptations of Power: trying to understand the “real people who are shaped by their experiences and those of the movements to which they have pledged allegiance.” Their work seeks to contextualize and understand the implications of the Arab Spring—for the Middle East region, of course, but also for the wider audience in the United States and elsewhere. The conference was structured around five themes: history, identity, outcomes of the Arab Spring, Islamic politics, and a “spotlight on Syria.” For this collection, and considering that each author’s work cuts across at least two of the themes, we present the papers according to geography. We begin in Morocco, where M. Chloe Mulderig and Eliza Berg explore issues of identity, activism, and governmental response to the protests of 2011 and early 2012. Ms. Mulderig’s work earned her a commendation for “best paper” for the conference. Ms. Berg’s paper earned an honorable mention. Through a comparison of the 1996 and 2011 constitutions and interviews with Moroccan citizens, Ms. Mulderig examines how the government was able to quell popular protests—even encouraging many Moroccans to see the Arab Spring as “a struggle for other nations”—through carefully using language, capitalizing on identity politics, and situating the new constitution as part of a longer process of reform. Ms. Berg’s recent fieldwork in Rabat focused on how Moroccan feminist and youth activists are responding to the 2011 constitutional reforms. In exploring issues of identity in activism, particularly the links and tensions between “feminist” and “youth” activism, she seeks to deconstruct stereotypical notions of Arab women and reveal how they are effecting social and political change in the Arab World. UNDERSTANDING TODAY’S MIDDLE EAST: PEOPLES & PLACES OF THE ARAB SPRING | iv From Morocco, we shift to Erica Kenney’s comparative analysis of political upheaval and democratic prospects—what she calls the “divergent paths of transition”—in Tunisia and Egypt. She complicates the assumption that free elections are the sole indicator of democratic success for the Arab World. In comparing the two countries’ post-2011 governments, she argues that “equilibrium of religious and secular elements” may be an important ingredient in a Muslim-majority state’s success in shifting to democratic governance. Remaining in Egypt, we follow Sarah Detzner and Louise Klann in scrutinizing the history and future prospects of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ms. Detzner looks at how the Brotherhood’s survival strategies—in particular, the “trinity” of relationships upon which it draws—has enabled it to retain influence, and what the organization’s previous patterns may mean for its future role. Ms. Klann takes an organizational and sociological perspective, seeking to understand how internal rivalries and ideological rigidity in Brotherhood’s leadership have contributed to its “lack of resilience” in the formal Egyptian political sphere. The last two papers take us to Syria and Lebanon, countries whose struggles are, perhaps, only just beginning. Through discursive analysis of the regime’s actions to frame itself as a “protector of stability” for the people of Syria, Emily Cury seeks to complicate accepted explanations for why Bashar al-Assad has remained in power. She argues that this strategy of legitimation should not be ignored by those seeking to understand why the regime still stands. It seems appropriate to close this collection in Lebanon, where the raging Syrian conflict has, as Rima Rassi emphasizes, “no end in sight” and has created a refugee crisis that is placing unimaginable strain on Lebanon and countries throughout the region. That the Arab World has experienced new crises and political changes even in the few months since the conference makes our work all the more important. Ms. Rassi’s paper issues a clear call to the international community, and offers a potential solution, based on qualitative and quantitative analysis, to help Lebanon’s people and its government bear the incredible strain of hosting more than 1.5 million refugees.