Havoc in the Middle East

The Middle East has been one of the most "politically stable" regions with an average mandate of its leaders oscillating somewhere between 20-30 years. A special mention goes to Gaddafi who has been in power the longest in the region, since 1969, and is in fact the longest standing global leader with no royal lineage. The revolution, unravelling in the region has clearly caught the Arab leaders and the rest of the world with their pants down.

What's more, no one expected the posterchild of stable, secular, middle class Tunisia to be the first to take the tumble. Ben Ali was so firmly at the steering wheel that no one could ever imagine that a self-inflicting burning of a vegetable salesman would bring him to flee Tunisia without even putting up a decent fight. The military said "that's enough" and he just left, of course not after his hairdresser wife withdrawing 45 million of gold reserves from the Central Bank, in addition to his existing personal fortune estimated at about ten times that.

Surprising as it may be, the fact that Tunisia was the first card in the deck to fall is historically important. First, Tunisia is not exactly strategic to the US interests and the French, who have historically been very much present, did not manage to produce any loud noises, at least not coherently. The French Foreign Affairs Minister - who should have known better, having served as a Minister of Defence and previously of Interior - quipped that France can send French troops to help quell rebellion in Tunisia. She was promptly and correctly told to zip it and has since even apologised.

Second, the jasmine revolution could not have been branded as some sort of unruly Islamic revolt that would have all Western politicians looking uncomfortably to Iran and anxiously shifting in their seats. It was simply a plea that eventually became sufficiently desperate that survival took the back seat and that tactics with mortal outcomes, traditionally reserved to Islamists (i.e. suicide bombings) have morphed into secular self-destruction (i.e. self burning). What is less known is that this ritual has sadly become somewhat of a fad with young men burning themselves across the Maghreb.

We can only be grateful the revolts did not begin in the Gulf, where US has more strategic interests (access to oil, military bases etc.) And it is indeed interesting to observe that the Arab awakening has left entirely untouched the royal fiefdoms of the Middle East. It would be temping to say that the people of the Gulf countries are fat cats who don't have an interest in political activism of the sort, but Jordan and Morocco provide a litmus test to that statement. Both are extremely poor, royal and reasonably stable, at least in recent years.

So why Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen? Because Ben Ali, Mubarak and Saleh. Put this way, the similarity is striking - all belong to the old military guard, having been in power for over 30 years, all are secular and enjoy no popular support, all have been propped up to varying extent by Western interests in the Middle East, all have relied on an alliance with the military. And yet, unlike the royal regimes who are confident to have their offspring continue to rule, these leaders have behaved like investment bankers trying to hit their annual bonuses, as opposed to seeing the company performance over the longer term.

Now that these revolts are fully underway, the media is overflowing with speculation regarding how they will play out. In Tunisia, the government has already been formed and only time will tell whether democratic tendencies will install themselves and in what concotion. The elephant in the room is of course the status of the Islamic party, Ennahdha, hethero banned, whose alleged representative, Rachid Ghanouchi, is back home from his home away from home, Britain. There are diverging viewpoints on this and Ayatollah Khatami is already seeing "Islam-based Middle East" in the making. I think many, myself included, would beg (and hope) to differ.

The situation in Egypt is perhaps the most tense, unpredictable and consequential for the "new Middle East" than that in Tunisia or even Yemen. In a recent interview, Hilary Clinton tried to predict the outcome by declaring unambiguously, in total seriousness (and with considerable degree of hypocrisy, if you ask me): "what will happen to Egypt is up to the Egyptian people." While that truism should be so obvious as to sound ridiculous when repeated, it is also not exactly the case. What happens on the streets of Egypt is up to the Egyptians, what happens in terms of political change in Egypt is at least as much up to Americans (or their leaders).

And Americans (and for that matter Europeans) are clinging to Mubarak like surround wrap to old piece of cheese. Mubarak has meant stability and stability is a good thing as far as old friends go. With close to 1.5 billion dollars annual aid from the US alone, Mubrak has been able to rule like a pharaon, to the point that that when Egyptians talk of a pharaon they actually refer to Mister M himself. He's been subject to so much ridicule that there are now actually collections of Mubarak jokes like there used to be for Bush Jr. For a good laugh, see "Making fun of the pharaoh" on Foreign Policy.

What seems to have escaped the America and its incoherent Middle East policy in the is the tradeoff between short and long term stability. The more they have encouraged stability, the more instability has ultimately come their way. This should really not be surprising. For ordinary Egyptians, stability they have had is one frustrating kind: stability of illiteracy, of poverty, of traffic jams, of corruption. In response to this stability sought by Egypt's friends, the only unstable variable has been the rise of Islam to the point the only opposition left standing is the Muslim Brotherhood, ready as always to die for their cause.

The second pillar of the Mubarak house allegedly supported by American interests was democracy. Stability and democracy was what has been shouted through a megaphone by successive American administrations, with none of them stopping to realise that those are actually incompatible. Perhaps they realised those two policy objectives were incongruent the day Hamas won elections in not so far away Palestine, but who wants to downgrade the good old democracy? Apparently nobody.

As a result, Ministries of Foreign Affairs in capitals in Europe and North America are now caught peddling political banalities about how the regime needs to respond to its people, without anyone daring to say a word about the regime itself. This is not a regime that is going to respond to its people because that would equate to self-destruction. There is no need to dig the archives for a confirmation of this, it made loud and clear in elections for the Egyptian parliament being only a few months ago. It was made cristal clear again when Mubarak appointed his 75 year old security chief as the Prime Minister.

Mohammed El Baradai might, for the moment, be a solution that addresses the current predicament. He seems to have more popular support than anyone else and he is backed by Muslim Brotherhood, which is certainly not lacking any popular support. Ironically, I am not so certain that he would be backed in Western capitals, not least in Washington where he is still bitterly remembered as the man who claimed that the Iraqi nuclear programme was suspended in 1990s and hence that the war in Iraq was groundless. It does not matter that he was right, what matters is that he had his own opinion. Whether El Baradei will make for a loyal partner in the region, is far from irrelevant to managing Egyptian succession in Washington and hence, in Egypt itself.

In the meantime, what seems relatively clear is that barring major foreign intervention to prop up Mubarak, the man is over. Reporting from Cairo, Robert Fisk, one of the few experts on the region, basically points out that today the Egyptian president might as well be the main character in Catch 22. Doomed if he orders to the army to shoot the demonstrators, doomed if he does not. There is no reason to believe these angry crowds will tire out and dissipate like clouds, even if Facebook is and phone lines are cut. After all, the average Egyptian does not have either.

In any event, the outcome currently in the cards for Egypt will likely not be either democratic or stable. The "made in U.S" political template is simply not the right one for political evolution of Egypt. The people on the streets clearly do not see the benefits of stability, even though some of it like the peace dividend with Israel and the economic reforms of the Nazif led government, are not inconsequential. The problem for them is less the technocrats and their policies and probably more the politicians and their politics. Unlike stability, they seem to note the value of democracy, but it is far from clear that they are ready for it.

Ironically, democracy is not really a value innate value for peoples of the Middle East, who have never really experienced it, having for centuries survived in royal regimes, under tribal rule and simply under repression. The only democracies in this part of the world are Israel and Lebanon and I think none of their neighbours are envious of their political systems, for quiet different reasons. Of course, this can never be admitted by any politician for the noble cause of political correctness.

What everyone also seems afraid to admit is that democracy and stability takes time to reconcile. The Egyptian transition, if not managed carefully can result in chaos and a sort of free-for-all that followed the transition from communism to market economy (aka oligarchy) in Russia. Another equally undemocratic faction will take power and the history will see a repeat of the Young and the Restless featuring a Mubarak substitute.

The only hope for some, even imperfect reconciliation of democracy and stability in Egypt is the formation of some sort of a coalition government where the religious based parties could coexist with secular ones. Ironically, the closest country where this system exists is Israel, although Turkey could also be seen as an example. Naturally, Israel will be the last place the Egyptian people might look for a political role model, but without the reconciliation of Islamist based parties with remaining secular based/religious minority movements, both stability and democracy might just be a far away mirage.