VOLUME 62 · ISSUE 1 · MARCH 2011 INSIDE MEI Focuses on Political Protest and Transformation 2 Why So Few Saw this Upheaval Coming 5 Meet the Scholars: In these unprecedented times of popular unrest in ton Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, Wayne White the Middle East, MEI is more engaged and active among many others. 7 Interview with MEJ Author than ever. In the past two weeks, we have hosted a Joshua Stacher handful of events including, “What the Egyptian This Bulletin provides further context in these times People Really Want” with Dr. Shibley Telhami and Dr. of turmoil. In this issue, our scholars offer some 9 The Middle East Journal Steve Kull; a program on the Egyptian military with perspective on why and how revolution has spread MEI Scholar Dr. Graeme Bannerman and MEI Board 10 Beyond the Beltway across the region. Editor of The Middle East Journal member Col. Joseph Englehardt, former Defense Michael Dunn discusses the very timely issue of po- Attache in Cairo; and an event entitled “Israel after 13 Contributions litical empowerment through social media. Michael Egypt: Challenges and Opportunities for Peace” with continues to be extremely active on his Editor’s blog Congressman Robert Wexler and Dr. Yoram Peri. which you can follow here. Demonstrators in Tunis calling for the Constitutional Democratic Rally to withdraw from the interim gov- ernment days after its leader, President Zine El-‘Abidine Ben ‘Ali, resigned and fled the country, January 18, 2011. (Photo: Flickr user Nasser Nouri) Our “Beyond the Beltway” segment notes the prodi- Also included is an interview with scholar Wayne gious work and media appearances of our scholars, White. He discusses his understanding of recent who have been extraordinary in responding to an political developments and what they mean for the Middle East outpour of hundreds of media requests. Just in the future of the Middle East. Furthermore, we pres- week of January 25th to February 1st, MEI experts ent an interview with Joshua Stacher discussing his Institute appeared over 40 times on TV news outlets including upcoming article in The Middle East Journal about 1761 N Street, NW C-SPAN, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, ABC, Fox, CNN, BBC, authoritarian politics and hereditary succession in Washington, DC 20036 PBS, and more. In print media, MEI made showings Syria. Stacher describes how his research and analy- tel 202-785-1141 in numerous prominent newspapers including The sis on the characteristics of autocratic leadership has fax 202-331-8861 New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washing- been affected by recent unseating of dictatorships. www.mei.edu [continued on page 2] Middle East Institute Bulletin • www.mei.edu 1 As events in the region continue to unfold, MEI’s mission to increase awareness between the Middle East and US seems vital. We hope you will help us fulfill our mission by becoming a member today. — Wendy Chamberlin Why So Few Saw this Upheaval Coming In the wake of the fall of Presidents Zine El-‘Abidine Ben ‘Ali in Tunisia and Husni Mubarak in Egypt, the re- volt against Mu‘ammar Qadhafi in Libya and the waves of protest that have swept Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen, and Jordan, among other countries, some have asked why Middle East analysts and/or the intelligence community failed to anticipate the revolutionary tide. It’s a fair question. And to be fair in trying to answer it, let us first acknowledge that there were a few voices crying in the wilder- ness, warning that the growing senescence of so many regimes, combined with the huge demographic bulge of youth under 30, educated but unemployed or underemployed, could not endure forever. Democracy activ- ists, among others, were well aware of these pressures. And for Egypt, at least, it was increasingly obvious that 2011 would be an important year, since President Mubarak had to decide whether to seek a sixth six-year term, or attempt to hand off power to his son. But most expected that to come to center stage later this year. The actual spark that set off the chain reaction, the suicide of a vegetable seller in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, was the sort of random trigger no pundit or analyst can foresee. And once the first domino fell, the disaffected in other countries took heart. Decades of stasis in the political development of many countries led not only outside observers, but the Arab elites themselves, to dismiss the Arab citizenry as passive, accept- ing direction from above. Nothing quite like these move- ments has been seen in recent decades, with the exception of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. In a region where most “revolutions” have been euphemisms for military coups, a real bottom-up revolution was hard to conceive of. One has to go back to the uprisings of the colonial era (Egypt 1919, Iraq 1921) to find anything similar. Or, of course, to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989–1991. Protestors in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, February 2011 (Photo: Flickr user Kodak Agfa) This is why so many Middle East experts seemed to be caught unprepared: everyone was unprepared. Nothing in the recent experience of the region remotely pre- pared anyone, including the Arab elites themselves, for what has occurred. Everything we thought we knew has been turned on its head. Crowds of demonstrators who once dispersed at the first sign of security forces EDITORIAL STAFF held firm in the face of armed lines of police and, in Libya, even stood against advanced combat weaponry. As this is written, of course, the ultimate outcome of this “Winter of Arab Discontent” is unknown. Egypt and Editors Tunisia have interim governments that have promised elections, but both countries’ revolts succeeded through Aaron Reese military intervention — directly in Egypt and in a more veiled manner in Tunisia — so the real future course Rachel Wilson will be charted by the men in uniform, though clearly they have understood the message of the demonstrators, and the latter will not be satisfied with an extended period of military rule. As also happened with the fall of Contributors Communism, various countries may see differing results; one size does not fit all, and some regimes may suc- Wendy Chamberlin ceed in weathering the storm. Others may be in for bloodshed and either revolutionary or counterrevolution- Michael Collins Dunn ary terror. Libya has already shed more blood than either of its neighbors in seeking to suppress the revolt. Julia Czaplinski In the first triumphant flush of victory when autocrats fall, the protesters have justifiably celebrated their tri- Zach Kiefer umph, but in fact, revolutionary change is not accomplished so readily. There is as yet no assurance that what Heather Malacaria Leah Nagy will emerge will really be the representative democracy the demonstrators say they want, as opposed to a new junta, or the replacement of the ousted autocrat with another one — a mere change of faces at the top. A Real Change MEI Bulletin is published four times a year from Despite these cautions, it is nevertheless clear that there has been a sea change in the region, a new empower- Washington, DC. ment of a broad range of social classes, to a greater or lesser extent organized and channeled by young people Middle East Institute Bulletin • www.mei.edu 2 with good educations, uncertain futures, and a facility with social networking. Facebook and Twitter did not make the revolutions, but they provided an important ancillary tool for organizing. In a way, we are seeing the culmination of a change that began with the rise of satel- lite television channels in the 1990s, and accelerated with the ubiquity of the mobile phone. Of course, Iran showed in 2009 that it could shut down the Internet to silence protests. But when Egypt and Libya did so this year, workarounds were found: dialup connections to Europe, for example. And in a global economy, the Internet cannot stay down for long without isolating the country and bringing commerce to a halt. A country cannot be as isolated as North Korea unless it is The headquarters of the National Democratic prepared to live with North Korea’s economy. Party after it was consumed by fire (Photo: Flickr user Kodak Agfa) The old guards, the aging men who have ruled so long in the region, have shown again and again that they do not understand the implications of the new media. They don’t get it; therefore they don’t understand how to deal with it. Despite Libya’s rigorous exclusion of foreign reporters, cell phone videos of atrocities have flooded YouTube. In days past it was sometimes said that freedom of the press was great, as long as you could afford to own a printing press. The technological empowerment of Web 2.0 means that everyone has a printing press, and also a television studio, and it fits in your pocket. This technological empowerment has provided young Arab activists with the tools to implement genuine political empowerment. That is what is genuinely new, and why the revolutions of 2011 are unlikely to simply lapse back into autocracy with a change of faces in the leadership chair. The exact course of each country will of course be distinctive, and the obstacles and setbacks encountered will differ, but the region, like the world, has changed irreversibly. What happens next cannot be precisely predicted, as these events themselves were not precisely predicted. But change is under way. — Michael Collins Dunn is the Editor of The Middle East Journal and a Scholar at the Middle East Institute. The Middle East Institute presents The Enivronment and the Middle East: Pathways to Sustainability This special issue of Viewpoints is the first volume examining environmental issues in the Middle East and is now available on our website at http://www.mei.edu/Publi- cations.aspx.