Occ_Pap_Long_View.pdf

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Revolution in

the Arab World:The Long View

Laleh Khalili

Jillian Schwedler

William Zartman

Gamal Eid

Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign ServiceGeorgetown University

CenterforContemporary

Arab Studies


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2011 by the Center or Contemporary Arab Studies. All rights reserved.


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In January and February 2011 populist uprisings toppled the authoritarian governmentso unisia and Egypt and similar revolts began to emerge in other Arab states includ-ing Bahrain Libya Morocco Syria and Yemen. An article in the 18 March 2011 issue o

the Chronicle Review by Ursula Lindsey Te Suddenly New Study o Egypt addressedhow these events had turned the study o persistent authoritarianism in the Arab world onits head. No longer or example could scholars point to how Egyptians and other Arabs

tend to engage in one o two extremes: political apathy or political violence. Lindsey alsosuggested that scholars shi their ocus away rom the power o elites to the strength oordinary people and grass-roots movements or retool their scholarship to allow or in thecase o Egypt more emphasis on groups other than the Muslim Brotherhood as signicantsources o opposition.

Indeed it has become abundantly clear that scholars need to re-think the study o unisiaEgypt and other Arab states. In the spring o 2011 academics were naturally only beginningto consider the changes taking place and what they might mean or the Arab world and be-

yond. As New York University Proessor o Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and HistoryDr. Zachary Lockman told the Chronicle Teres a time lag beore scholars o whatever canmake sense o [a revolution] and what it means to their work. Tat process has just begun.

In order to create a space in which to set this process in motion the Center or Contem-porary Arab Studies at Georgetown University organized a spring lecture series entitledRevolution in the Arab World: Te Long View. Te series proposed a variety o interdis-ciplinary and long-term perspectives on the repercussions o the revolutions. By address-ing the question o authoritarianism both as a thematic and regional issue the series

sought to interrogate two aspects o the complex events. Te rst concerns the uid situa-tions in unisia and Egypt where state elites the military and emergent non-state actorsare struggling to dene a new balance o power. Te second pertains to the wider implica-tions o the unisian and Egyptian events specically to their challenges to the patternsand operations o Arab authoritarian governments. Among the thematic questions theseries examined and addressed are: the prospects or unisian and Egyptian reormers toinstitutionalize the achievements o their revolutions; the potential or the unisian andEgyptian examples to be repeated in other Arab countries; the comparative vulnerabilityo Arab authoritarian states to similar popular uprisings and the various counter-strate-

gies they may employ to resist contain or co-opt the momentum o the populist protests.

Te our edited transcripts presented in this compendium provide a sampling rom theseries and address many o these issues. Te rst oo Early to ell: When is a Revolutiona Revolution? given byDr. Laleh Khalili o the School o Oriental and Arican Studiesat the University o London provides much-needed context on revolutions by comparing

IntroductIon


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2 Center or Contemporary Arab Studies - Georgetown University

the revolutions o the Arab Spring to other revolutions o the twentieth century particu-larly that o Iran and examines some o their repercussions. Tough Khalili speaks ohow dicult it is to ascertain the eects o revolutionseven decades latershe ends herpresentation by asserting the importance o the newound loss o ear against repressive

governments in the Arab world. Tis change is at once ephemeral and dicult to graspshe says but also prooundly transormative over generations.

Dr. Jillian Schwedler o the University o Massachusetts Amherst also addresses the rev-olutions rom a big-picture perspective in her talk Te Geography o Political Protests.Schwedler like Khalili advocates stepping back in time in order to gain a clearer view othe revolutions todaynot she argues to see how we could have anticipated the presentbut to help us understand what might happen in the present. o accomplish this task shelooks systematically at protests in Jordan over several decades with a ocus on law urban

space and spectacle. Trough these tropes Schwedler maintains that large-scale protestsin Jordan may be possible despite barriers to them in the orm o restrictive laws and ur-ban planning. However she stresses that we should ocus not on their possibility but onhow and when they might unold and why they oen do not.

Dr. William Zartman o the School o Advanced International Studies at Johns HopkinsUniversity and Mr. Gamal Eid Founder and Executive Director o Cairos Arabic Net-work or Human Rights Inormation speak more specically about the revolutions inunisia and Egypt respectively. Zartman examines the history o uprisings in unisia

arguing that such revolts are not new but a unisian way o doing things. He then o-cuses on unisias current power vacuum providing commentary on the dierent groups

vying or leadership.

Mr. Eids concern with the Egyptian revolution centers around the countrys youth andits use o the Internet over the last six years to bring about protests calling or democracyculminating in the uprising in ahrir Square. He shows how Facebook witter and othermedia have assisted activists in rallying support and organizing protests bringing aboutsuccessul mobilization. He ends by noting that in Syria despiteor because oInternet

blockages by the regime people are going into the streets to express their anger. In Syriathe protests are increasing he says. Te people are not going to remain at home.

As the Arab Spring has turned into the Arab Fall we have witnessed Qadda's demisewhile al-Assad clings to power. With time the ate o the remaining authoritarian rulersin the region will become clear. But the ull dimensions o the revolutions o 2011 willremain unknown or some time. We dont know how [the process o rethinking Arabauthoritarianism] will end Lockman told the Chronicle. But some kind o chapter seemsto have opened. Tese our papers allow us to begin the process o writing that chapter o

making sense o these momentous changes.

Mimi Kirk, EditorCenter for Contemporary Arab StudiesOctober 2011


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too Early to tEll:

WhEn Is a rEvolutIon a rEvolutIon?

Laleh Khalili, Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics,School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

t

he title o my paper oo Early to ell: When is a Revolution a Revolution? comesrom an apocryphal story in which the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai responded to

the question What do you think the impact o the French Revolution has been?by saying It is still too early to tell. O course this was in 1960. Tere is a certain sublime

verisimilitude to this statement. History may be viewed as the momentary punctuation oan event that can result in tectonic shis in class congurations discourses and concep-tions o political possibilities that are elt centuries later.

In this essay I hope to cast a brie glance at the uprisings o the Arab Spring and by com-paring them to the revolutions o the twentieth century particularly the Iranian revo-lution examine some o their resulting transormations and address how ephemeral or

lasting these transormations may be particularly or unisia and Egypt. Tis comparisonbegins by looking rst at the particular ways in which a revolution is made then examineswhat changes a revolutionary transormation entails and nally oers some reections onmeaningul ways o looking at revolutions and revolutionary movements.

So how are revolutions made? One o the oremost theoreticians and practitioners orevolutionary arts in the twentieth century was Lenin. He identied three potential pre-requisites or the emergence o a revolution: mass insurrection; a well-mobilized class(rather than a party or conspiracy) acting as the leaders o the movement; and divisions

and vacillations in the ranks o the enemy.

In both unisia and Egypt the uprisings most notable characteristic was its broad-basednature. As in Iran o 1978 and 1979 the movements crossed class boundaries as well as re-ligious and urban/rural divides. In all three cases clearly organized working class move-ments were crucial to the ormation o those ace-to-ace hard ought and longstandingrelationships that oen underline mass mobilization and that make or break revolution-ary movements. In unisia and Egypt union mobilizationwhich began a long time be-ore the uprisingswas crucial as was student activism. Here I am not reerring to gen-

eralized youth but students specically. In Iran as in Egypt the mosques were a meanso mobilization and dissemination o revolutionary directives and speeches. However themosques in Egypt were a starting point or demonstrations rather than the organizationalnodes they had been in Iran.


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Te extent to which internal divisions within regimes cause their vulnerability to upris-ings depends greatly upon the complexion o power. Tis is where I dier in my analy-sis rom Lenin. Such divisions were not present in a meaningul way in the monarchicalregime o Iran in 1978 or 1979. Nevertheless the revolution proceeded until it produced

a horizontal split in the military that allowed revolutionary orces to take over militarybases and arsenals throughout the cities. What was notable in Iran was not ssures in theruling class but precisely what Lenin considers a necessary precondition: vacillation. TeShahs regime could not decide between a wholly violent suppression o the revolt and agradual opening o political space. In act its alternation between coercion and a saety-

valve style o appeasement opened up a space o mobilization where ear dissipated andthe sense o possibility grew.

Vertical ssures on the other hand have occurred almost daily in the case o Libya. For

example ocials began deecting rom the regime as soon as the uprisings started. Yetbecause o the concentration o power and political institutions in the hands o the Qad-da amily these vacillations and divisions did not quickly alter the stability o the regimeor its use o extraordinary violence in countering the armed insurrection against it. Onthe other hand in both unisia and Egypt such divisions and vacillations were absolutelycrucial to the outcome o the uprisings. In unisia the military took the side o the pro-testors. In Egypt the militarywhich is a much more powerul orce with a much largercorpus o economic and political interest than in unisiaprotected its anks by orcingMubarak out o power. (Post-revolution however it has le the structures o authority un-

touched which does not bode well or the post-revolutionary regime.) Tese divisions wil lalso determine what is to come in Yemen but in petrol monarchies they may not matteras the amilies monopolize the levers o power and the institutions o the state decreasingthe likelihood o divisions in general.

What Lenin does not mention is the role o outside intervention in precipitating revolution.However given the Russian Revolutions timing during the First and Second World Wars heocuses on the eects o international war on revolutionary mobilization. And in a very in-teresting text called War and Revolution he reects on the French Revolution. Lenin writes

When the French revolutionary townspeople and revolutionary peasants over-threw the monarchy at the close o the eighteenth century by revolutionary meansthat policy o the revolutionary class was bound to shake all the rest o autocraticczarist imperial and semi-eudal Europe to its oundations. And the inevitablecontinuation o this policy o the victorious revolutionary class in France was thewars in which all the monarchist nations o Europe orming their amous coali-tion lined up against revolutionary France in counter-revolutionary war.1

1 V.I. Lenin War and Revolution 1917 available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/14.htm (accessed 7 September 2011).


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Lenin viewed this counter-revolutionary waras not necessarily a detrimental occasionbut one in which a new orm o warare is invented where levy en masse underwrites thelegitimacy o the new state and where Napoleon invents entire new strategies o wararewhich in act are still reected in the ways European powers ght.

Further along in the twentieth century perhaps no moment is as striking as the warwaged between Iran and Iraq. aking place only a year aer the revolution had over-thrown the Shah it had an immediate eect that was very much in line with Leninsanalysis. Power was consolidated in the hands o Irans regime rather than the reversewhich is what Saddam Hussein and his Western allies had hoped. In the case o theArab Spring we have not seen outright war but rather brutal suppression using oreigntroops. Tis was the case in Bahrain where Saudi Arabia deployed some 4000 troopsunder the Peninsula Shield to an island whose population only numbers one million.

Foreign interventions in most o the rest o the ongoing Arab revolutions have been lesscoercive and more will ing to be hegemonic in the Gramscian sense. Tis means that theattempt rom the outside to co-opt revolutionary movements has been ar more pro-nounced than outright warare. For example U.S. and European powers have alreadyattempted to aect the outcome o unisian elections via their democracy promotionprograms which entail injections o millions o dollars and euros to assist democraticorces into power.2

In Egypt the orm o co-optation has been more directly economic. Te moderate elite

who are in power right now are in mediations to allow or the IMF the World Bank andthe U.S. government to invest in the country or to ensure that the kinds o economictransormations that could take place all within the narrow remit o a new liberal capital-ism that we have come to recognize as Washington consensus.

In Yemen such interventions are more dicult to trace. Tere are certainly covert move-ments we are not privy to that likely take the shape o military-to-military cooperationbetween the United States its allies and the Yemeni army. But what is striking in thecase o Yemen Bahrain and I also argue Syria and Libya is the extent to which Saudi

Arabiaas the most signicant U.S. client in the region along with Israelhas its owndesperate agenda o survival and has attempted to prevent the kind o transormationthat it was helpless to orestall in unisia and Egypt. In Yemen Libya and Syria SaudiArabia has been very quick to cultivate and support its own acceptable oppositional can-didates. Tese are gures rom within the establishment with varying volumes o bloodon their hands who would not rock the proverbial security boat in the region. It is im-portant to remember that Saudi Arabia has long struggled to impose its own prooundlyconservativein all meanings o that wordvision o what social socioeconomic andpolitical relations should be in the region especially upon those countries unortunate

enough to be in its immediate periphery. Tis imposition involves not only

2 Please note that this lecture was given beore the NAO intervention in Libya.


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the channeling o vast sums o money unaccounted or and opaquely transmitted to po-litical subcontractors in the region but also as we have seen especially with Bahrain andLibya ensuring that its international patronthe United Statesollows the contourso its own policy.

Having spoken about the larger orces that aect revolutions I now ocus on what sorts otransormations revolutionary movements are thought to bring. People inuenced by Marx-ian ideaswho have been prominent in our thinking about revolutions in the twentiethcenturyusually see large-scale and lasting sociological transormations as those that mat-ter. C.L.R James the great Caribbean historian who was an unorthodox Marxian wrote:

In a revolution when the ceaseless slow accumulation o centuries burst into volca-nic eruptions the meteoric ares and ights above are a meaningless chaos and lend

themselves to innite caprice and romanticism unless the observer sees them alwaysas projections o the subsoil rom which they come.3

Te subsoil James mentions is the interrelation between social classes. One has to rec-ognize as James does the power struggles resulting rom the end o colonialism. In asense the structural conditions that led to the revolts in the countries o the Middle Eastt the classical models. One o these structural eatures is the persistent widening o so-cioeconomic ssures between a ast-rising capitalist class that seems intent on auntingits newly acquired wealth and a group that Ase Bayat a sociologist has called the poor

middle classes.4

Tese classes are educated but they are barred rom paths o afuenceand prosperity because o a lack o jobs or skilled and educated workers. Such structuraltransormations tend to occur over generations sometimes centuries. With hindsightwe can see that the Russian and Chinese revolutions were crucial in eventually bringingabout a capitalist class who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the robber barons o thenineteenth century United States. Tese revolutions also brought about lasting transor-mations in such things as gender relations and political regimes.

In the Middle East the Iranian revolutions structural eects are still dicult to discern

some 30 years later. We can at least say that the revolution has accelerated the rise o abourgeois class and has brought about the slow transormation o the old American capi-talists o the bazaar into a hybrid class engaged in industrial production. Te revolutionseect on gender relations in Iran is o course mixed at best. While women o lower andmiddle classes have been incorporated into the economy due to urban capitalist orma-tions that the revolution hastened the regime has also been retrograde in its rolling back

3 C.L.R. James Te Black Jacobins: oussaint lOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution

(London: Penguin 2001) xix.4 Ase Bayat A New Arab Street in Post-Islamist imes 26 January 2011 available at:http://mideast.oreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/26/a_new_arab_street (accessed 7 Sep-tember 2011).


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o legal and political protections or women. Tis issue has brought about an unintendedconsequence: the rise o an extraordinarily vibrant womens movement that eatures in-novative and creative coalition building across ideological divides.

Tis is also something that we see in the Arab world. Gender relations are very visible rightnow and we are seeing transormations. What is striking is the role that women have playedin all o the revolutions particularly in Yemen where the gure most clearly associated withorganizing demonstrations is a woman rather than a man. It will likely take another genera-tion or us to see whether these revolutionary movements have shied class congurations.

Te rise o a new political elite is another o the earliest and most visible revolutionarytransormations. It is again striking to see the extent to which social economic and politi-cal elites are attempting to domesticate the Arab revolutionary movements by ensuring or

at least attempting to ensure that the new guardians o the state be moderate economi-cally and politicallyin relation to both neighborhood and global hegemons. We saw thisin the early attempts to ensure that Ghannouchi remained in power as Prime Ministero unisia as well as the overwhelming presence o the generals and unctionaries o theormer regimes in the ranks o the opposition in Egypt Libya and Yemen. It is still tooearly to tell what sorts o changes we will see but we will not have to wait or generations;elections and regime changes will give us some sort o an indication.

Beyond structural changes I diverge rom C.L.R James and his assessment o what he calls

the meteoric ights and ashes above or the ephemeral nature o such revolts. Whathave these revolutions wrought in terms o changes in the aective or the emotional ter-rain? Authoritarian regimes especially those with well-developed police states are par-ticularly good at imposing a sense o powerlessness and an atmosphere o paralyzing ear.In unisia the Ben Ali regime had a secret policeman or every 40 people. In Egypt wherethe police orce by some reckonings numbered 1.8 million police stations unctionedwith impunity as places where violence was exercised on the bodies o anyone showingany deance whatsoever. In the Iran o my childhood the most amous saying was Tewall has mice and the mice have ears which exhorted usthe children the adults every-

oneto silence. When the Shah came to visit my primary school when I was ve or sixyears old my ather a committed Marxist sat me down and said You know I want youto recognize that they are going to say he is a god but he is not a god. He is just a man.My mother became upset and said to my ather Dont say that! What i she repeats that?Tey will come and arrest you. Te atmosphere o ear was so incredibly powerul thateven parents elt that they could not really speak to their children about what was what.

What we have heard again and again rom the people o Sax and unis o Cairo andAlexandria and Suez o Damascus and Daraa o Bahrain and Aden and Sanaa o Sohar

and Muscat is that their ear has broken. In places where the revolutionary movement hassucceeded in bringing about changes in the political elite we have what Elizabeth Woodhas called in her beautiully evocative phrase the pleasure o agency. Tis the sensethat it is Springthat revolutionary possibility can travel across borders can take reuge


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in peoples hearts and homes and emotions and ideas in city streets plazas caes andmosques where people gather beore marching; that a sense o solidarity and aection canbind people in an imagined community o revolt; that all is possibleis at once ephemeraland dicult to grasp but also prooundly transormative over generations. Many o the

youth who mobilized in Iran in 2009 who were not even born during the revolution knowsomething about this ear having been broken. As Aim Csaire one o the great Carib-bean poets wrote Te work o man is only just beginning and it remains to conquer allthe violence entrenched in the recesses o our passion. And there is a place or all at therendezvous o victory. Tat rendezvous o victory is still to come.


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thE GEoGraphy of polItIcal protEsts

Jillian Schwedler, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

the interactions we see between protestors and police structure the kinds o ques-tions that we ask about protest: Do the police overreact? Who throws the rst stone?Does it escalate? From where did this come? In the case o unisia the answer to

the latter question seems straightorward: in an act o sel-immolation a man caused the

country to rise up and topple the government. On the one hand I do not want to diminishsuch a moment. Seminal moments o spark are when the consensus changes into a eelingthat something else is possible. Over time and around the world there has been no short-age o people in repressed societies wanting to change their world to demand somethingdierent. But on the other hand the stakes are oen so high repression so reliable andsevere that people oen do not demand change.

Tus moments o something breaking o the impossible seeming to become possible areextraordinarily important not only in unisia but around the region. Only a ew months

ago we said Well this is never going to happen in Syria. Quite rankly I think that ev-erything is on the table now. Tough I am not in the business o prediction a lot can hap-pen. Te vision that a dierent world is possible changes the spirit o what could happen.

But I think we also need to step back not only to look at the events leading up to theseextraordinary times. Oen we examine precursors to revolutions in order to nd in themthe moments that indicated uture events. Yet the point o looking back should not beto see that we could have anticipated the present but to help us understand what mighthappen in the present. We might ask: What kinds o groups have had what kinds o re-

lationships with the regime over the years? What kinds o protests have been permittedand what kinds o protests have been repressed? How does the government use law? Tisway when we arrive at seminal moments we might be completely surprised as many o uswere by what has recently happened but we will also have an understanding o preciselywhat has changed how the previous relations and practices have shied and why.

Along these lines I want to look systematically at protests in Jordan over the years in regardto three particular dimensions that are seldom closely examined: law space and spectacle.In terms o law protests are seemingly extra-legal moments during which law is not rel-

evant because the situation is about the engagement between protestors and police clashingin the street or square. But understanding these encounters requires that we examine whathappens beore and aer these protest events and how the regime uses the law.


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First a prevalent and erroneous belie is that protests do not occur in authoritarianstates. In act most authoritarian regimes do tend to allow some limited protests al-though not all attempts at demonstrations are equally tolerated. In some cases protest-ers actually negotiate the parameters o these demonstrations with government ocials.

Many o these events are modest in scale and we seldom hear about them in the Westernmedia. Nor do they oen achieve what they set out to do other than to express dissentpubliclythough that alone can be a huge achievement. But most countries even themost authoritarian do have some sort o culture o protest that is much more widespreadthan commonly believed. Jordan has a long history o protest activitiesand not onlythe large protests that we see in the media during which someone burns an Israeli agpeople march or the Right o Return or thousands shout U.S. out o Iraq but all kindso protests. Tese might involve 50 people sitting in ront o the Prime Ministry to pro-test restrictions on press reedoms work stoppages by judges in support o a lawyer who

has been arrested but not charged and innumerable labor strikes and sit-ins. In Jordanprotests are perhaps not as widespread as they have been in Egypt the past ew years butthey have been going on or decades.In the early 1950s Jordans rst constitution allowed the right to political assembly andthe people oen exercised this right. Te constitution was suspended in 1957 and was notreinstated until aer 1989. Yet even during that 32-year period protests occurred. Tegovernment would sometimes crack down on larger gatherings but the bigger issue is thatpeople were still pushing the boundaries and demanding political expression.

In 1989 a political reopening occurred in some ways similar to the one that had takenplace in the 1950s with the emergence o multiple political parties activism widespreadpublic debate and a ree and vibrant press. Within the next ew years the regime liedmartial law put constitutional amendments orth or popular ratication opened the me-dia and ormally allowed public gatherings.

Yet since 1989 i one wishes to organize a protest one needs to inorm the Jordaniangovernment where it will be held what it will involve and how many people are expected.

In 2001 the government began to require not only notication but that the organizerso demonstrations obtain a permit. It was in this year that Jordans parliament was sus-pended and in the two years until the establishment o the new parliament approximately250 temporary laws were passed. Tese laws were only supposed to engage with issueso security but they were in act about such things as raising the price o car insuranceand curtailingpublic gatheringswhich were obviously not immediate security concerns.When the parliament reconvened in 2003 it signed a law requiring citizens to get permis-sion rom the government to gather in public. Te law decreed thatorganizers o protestswere also personally responsible or any damage that might result rom the gathering.

Even beore the government introduced the permit system it would oen pressure theorganizer to not have a certain kind o protest would declare that there would be toomany people or public saety or would suggest that the event be held at an alternate loca-


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tion. Tese negotiations were all inormal but organizers understood that they shouldwork with the government or risk having their event entirely shut down. In particular thegovernment tried to dissuade marches as it wanted protests relegated to stationary smalland easily contained spaces. All this legislation constitutes a serious barrier yet people le

or protests all the time and rom many dierent outletspolitical parties proessionalassociations and independent movements. It is seldom recognized that Jordanian protes-tors have engaged in such a dialogue with dierent parts o the government or years evenprior to 1989 but particularly since then.

In addition to examining laws with which protestors must negotiate we need to look moresystematically at what happens to protesters aer they are arrested. Te government ocourse aims to silence them but it uses dierent parts o the law depending on what itwants to accomplish. One would think that the public gathering law would be the primary

law reerenced in such cases. But every year since 2003 that I have been to Jordan to in-terview three dozen lawyers and activists who have been arrested I have so ar not ounda single case o someone being prosecuted or violating this lawor ailing to obtain apermit or example or or violating the agreed-upon terms o the event. Instead pro-testers are more typically charged with damaging property threatening state security orinsulting a oreign regime.

It is clear that the government uses the law to deate structure channel and encourage cer-tain kinds o protests while keeping other kinds o protests down. An examination o these

interactions between state agents and various protesters will provide us with a much richerpicture rom which we might better understand moments o revolution precisely because wewill have a better sense o what has been possible and what has been perceived as possible.

I came upon the topic o physical space as it relates to protests by accident. I was interview-ing a protestor who was talking about how he and his colleagues choose sites or protests.We were driving around downtown Amman and he said You know we cant even pro-test here anymore. Why? I asked. He said Because there are all o these high-speedunderpasses and overpasses and the cars go ying by and we cant stop trac anymore

here. So we have to protest somewhere else. Tis got me looking at the way the city hasprooundly changed over the last decadeand how its altered space has aected protests.

Around six years ago a peaceul Muslim Brotherhood-organized protest near the oldHussein Mosque basically shut down Amman,s center. At the time this immediate down-town area was the center o town and as ew as 100 people on Zahran Street with its serieso eight trac circles leading westward could bring part o the city to a halt. As a resultit was a common location or protests and the government struggled to either prevent orbreak them up.

As my interviewee mentioned new overpasses and underpasses now move trac veryquickly through this area so that cars no longer have to slow down to move through thecircles. As such Zahran Street is no longer a threatening place to have protests because


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very ew people venture there anymore. I your protest cannot be seen or cannot disruptnormal activities it is ar less eective. Tis is a spatial question and it has real impact.

Ammans center o commerce now lies in West Amman which is quite a ways rom the old

city center. Te area been reconstructed to acilitate spaces o global capital and one ndslarge projects intended to create a cosmopolitan city. Te projects aim to create a series otall buildings along with commercial and residential spaces which the government as wellas the organizers like to describe as a new downtown. Te corner o one site covers theold public security central oces the notorious mukhabarat. Tus a neoliberal project isliterally being built on the oundations o a security state. Such projects are ostering pub-lic spaces that are actually private commercial spaces which can be policed and controlledmore stringently as citizens have no right to be there. I one is not buying a our-dollarcoee in an upscale cae one is not really welcome to enjoy or inhabit that space. Tis elit-

ism helps the government because it keeps those who do not belong (those who mightprotest) out o West Amman. Essentially the government wants to ensure that oreigninvestors can go to the sushi bars and beautiul hotels and get to their places o work.

I want to emphasize that I do not believe that any o these urban building projects areintended to block protests; I have not ound any evidence that would indicate such a plan.However shutting down protests has been a side eect o these projects and protestors areincreasingly rustrated. Carrying out successul gatherings has become more and moredicult as many public spaces are either out o town very careully policed or undesir-

able because o heavy trac. While it is still true that i critical mass occurs in a high tra-c area people can shut down the city it is also true that 200 people can do ar less thanthey could even a ew years ago.

Protestors obviously want to operate in places that will make the most impact and heav-ily populated and afuent neighborhoods such as those in West Amman have become anideal space to disrupt. Various government-employed policing agencies prevent proteststhere and in other prominent commercial districts by shutting down roads preventingprotestors rom coming inparticularly those traveling in buses sponsored by protest

organizers. When protestors succeed in getting through the police attempt to clear thespace as quickly as possible by transporting them in minivans to dierent places aroundthe city where they are detained or hours. Te protestors are usually not charged but thespace has been eectively emptied o potential disruption the protestors made invisible.In contrast the police manage protests in places like university campuses and reugeecamps by circling the protests so that they do not spill over eectively hiding them romthe more general public. Tough groups in these spaces can protest all day no one seesand no one cares.

ahrir Square in Cairo was amously inspired by Haussmanns Paris with its large opensquaresand wide avenues that orm spokes and eature bridges. Te irony is that Napo-leon III hired Haussman to prevent large-scale movement o people in Parisso thattanks could get in and out easily and so there would be clear lines o sight or shooting.


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Tere is a lovely irony that a square in Cairo inspired by such spatial ideology becamethe site o a revolution. It is probably the most easily policeable space in Cairo but thatis where the revolution took place. Indeed the case o ahrir Squarenot the only siteo the Egyptian revolution o coursetells us that even though it may seem nearly im-

possible to overcome authoritarian control o urban space it is in act possible. Tus thephysical changes to Amman that have altered the protest geography o Jordan should notbe assumed to have eliminated the potential or highly disruptive demonstrations. Tequestion is not whether they are possible but how and when they might unold and whythey oen do not.

Spectacle is about protesting or a specic audience and gaining visibility. Te pres-ence o such elements as the media Youube and cell phones has changed everythingthough I do not think we ully understand how it has done so. Many say that because

o these devices the state no longer controls the narrative. elevision and radio sta-tions were crucial or state security in the past and thus were Army outposts becausethey were essential or controlling the narrative o what was happening. But what isdierent is that now everyone has a video camera on their cell phone and they can im-mediately upload videos to Youube. Te widespread means o conveying images andevents has ended state control o narratives and has thereore changed orever what ispossible. Images o spectaclesprotests demonstrations conrontations with securityagenciescan easily be conveyed; the challenge now is only to nd the right audiencedomestically as well as internationally.

I want to end with an example o a protest that may aid in understanding protests to come.In Jordan Queen Rania has become the model o a good protestor organizing and leadingmarches to support humanitarian events and also showing up at more controversial gather-ings. When she participates in charged events one knows that the government is panickinga little and attempting to ip the narrative. In 2002 when Israel invaded Jenin and Nablusand a number o other towns in Palestine Amman was eectively shut down by large-scaleprotests or about six weeks. Late into the protests the Jordan River Foundation invitedQueen Rania to join a march in support o the Palestinian people. She led the march and

an image o her at the protest was releasedbut it was not intended or Jordanian audi-ences. Clad in jeans and a cardigan sweater the photo was meant to say to WesternersDont be araid o Muslims on the street. It is not scary we are already like you. We canalready be in dialogue.

What I ound most interesting in regard to these protests aside rom this image o theQueen is that the planned marches went rom places like the Proessional AssociationComplex to the Prime Ministryor to Parliament or to the Israeli Embassy or to the U.S.Embassy. Hence they arrived at places identied as symbolically complicit in the invasions.

Queen Ranias march went rom the Fih Circle on Zahran Street which is the site o twovery prominent hotels to a UN oce involved in Palestinianrelie only two blocks away.Symbolically her march said Te royal amily and government is or the Palestinian peo-ple. We are not protecting Israel or our government or U.S. policy; we are with the people.


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Te narrative o the protests was thus partially manipulated through the use o space. At-tending to such aspects o protest can help us understand the nature o uture protests byunpacking and revealing the players their objectives and the long history o interactionsbetween protesters and various government agencies. Tis does not mean that we can know

when a country will explode in revolution but grasping these dimensions can help us knowwhen a protest is more o the same and when it is truly something dierent.


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15

thE JasmInE rEvolutIon: hIstorIcal

prEcEdEnts and thE prEsEnt poWEr vacuum

William Zartman, Professor Emeritus,Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

t

he most striking thing about the unisian revolution was its spontaneity. It cameout o nowhere. Tat is to say it came out o the unisian people. Everyone said that

we didnt expect it to happen in unisia. Yet i one looks back at history uprisingshave happened beore in unisia. Tey are a unisian way o doing things.

In at least two prior instances unisians took to the streets in protest and battled withsecurity orces. In 1978 President Habib Bourgiba clamped down on the liberal wing ohis Socialist Destourian Party (PSD) and the unisian General Union o Labor (UG)and some 200 people were killed. Te security orces held on and the regime survived.Te regime soon aerward held elections which it won though the elections were con-tested. Tese elections marked a steporward or not it is hard to tellbut at least a step

in unisian politics.

More striking were the events o 1984 which I believe have parallels with the revolution.A man walked into the bakery in Douz in southern unisia and ound himsel conrontedwith a substantial increase in the price o bread. He ran out o the shop yelling I cant eedmy amily the way I am used to! Tough the man was not going to starve he saw that hisstandard o living was alling. Unrest spread throughout unisia and protestors burnedancy cars and in unis destroyed rich houses and other ostentatious signs o wealth.1

Te 1978 and 1984 protests both led to serious changes in politics though neither in theparty nor the type o government because Bourgiba survived both revolts and each timered his prime minister blaming him and other colleagues or the situation. In the 2011revolution however the leaderin this case President Zine el Abidine Ben Alididnot survive. As beore people rose up and took to the streets but something headiertook place: a massive uprising or popular intiada in which mobile phones and Facebookplayed a large part. (I do not think this a revolution per se because an upheaval o thesocial pyramid has not occurred but the unisians call it one). Tere are many explana-

1 Showy wealth is not part o unisian culture. North Arican homes traditionally have avery anonymous aade; whatever their riches they are ound inside. o exhibit them onthe exterior is not socially appropriate.


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tions as to why the people exploded and a avorite o governments and journalists is theeconomic situation. Yet unlike the poor man in Douz what happened in Sidi Bouzidwhathappened in Kasserine and then what spread to unis was not primarily a question oeconomics (although economics were getting tougher). Rather it went deeper stemming

principally rom the arrogance and disinterestedness o the unisian government whatAlgerians call al-hoghra.

unisians were ed up with a government that didnt care about them. Mohamed Bouazizidid not set himsel on re because he was underemployed but because he was publiclyhumiliated when the state inspector conscated his wares. It is interesting to note that theuprising began among people who were outside the center o unisian politicsthose liv-ing in places like Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine areas Moroccans would call bled as-siba theland o dissidence or those living in unis who came rom the countryside. It came rom

the popular side the rural side the poorer side this disdained side o the people and itspread across the social divide into the unisian middle classes.

Te revolution has resulted in an organizational vacuum and structure is needed. Tereare many candidates and it is useul to examine them their parties and their positions.In many situations o this kindor example in Algeria in 1988 when riots nally causedPresident Chadli Bendjedid to open up the political systemthe Islamists come roaringin and oer to provide order. As or Islamist orces in unisia there is the long-standingyet banned Islamist party al-Nahda. Al-Nahdas previous name MI is poorly translated

as the Movement or the Islamic endency. (A better translation is the Movement or theIslamic Way.) Tough MI was weak to begin withit was never a deep-seated unisianmovementBen Ali wrongly acted as i it was a large threat to him. Whatever was le oMI Ben Ali destroyed in the early 1990s with great vigor and violence. Under its newname the Nahda party is not likely to provide a strong appeal to unisians many o whomask I am Muslim but are you more Muslim than I? Why do I need a Muslim party?Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM is another Islamist orce. It has conductedterrorist attacks in Algeria and has also been in evidence in southern unisia but it is aoreign movement that is not popular among the unisian protestors.

However the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD)Ben Alis partyis still a orceeven though most unisians currently advocate the removal o the RCD rom politics

just as the Ba thists were removed rom the Iraqi government. Te RCD like the Ba thParty has many pasts. Its previous orm the PSD was seen as the villain in 1987 whenBen Ali staged his coup. It was so negatively viewed that its leaders reused to poll thepublic to see what their standing was. But renamed the RCD it went on to win electionsand Ben Ali who was striving to stand above all parties in the early years aer his take-over ound himsel won over by the old/new party which he then proceeded to reshape

in his own image.

Like the Iraqi Bathists the RCD is ormed o dierent groups: the corrupt ocials at thetop; the members in the middle who stood to gain by joining the party and helping admin-


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17

ister the state but who are not implicated in the corruption; and those at the bottom whoelt it wise to join the party because the party was in power. Despite the many who wouldnow have it banished RCD members are at present a pervasive group within unisian pol-itics. As such they are the most likely to provide some kind o administrative and electoral

skills or unisia. Furthermore the party represented many important sectors o unisiansociety notably the Sahel and unis bourgeoisie and rural armers and leaders. O coursethe party will do what it did beore: It will rename itsel it will scramble or a while it willget some new leaders and it will then be on the scene. It will not necessarily take over butit is a orce in unisian politics and its hour may come i the current vacuum persists andother orces do not provide the order and progress that the uprisers demanded.

Te UG is currently the most organized unisian political organization. Tough it isnot a singular orceit is split into divisions o leadership and policyit is still one o the

strongest orces that might provide leadership. It does not want to become a party but itsmembers are involved in the unisian Labor Party. Te current strongest secular party isNajib Chebbis Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) which kept its head above water inopposition during the Ben Ali period and now stands as a moderate contender in the elec-tions or the constituent assembly in October. Another party is ajdid the ormer Com-munist Party which enjoys some resonance with unisians but generally lacks legitimacybecause it did not ollow the UGs example o leaving the government.

Te government or its part is weak and divided and it is not quite sure where it stands or

who is in charge but it is the most necessary element. Its challenge is to establish a govern-ment that can represent the people and provide order so that elections can take place andgovernment policies can get moving especially in order to overcome the economic slumpthat has ollowed the uprising. ourism and industry remain slack and the governmentunder old guard politician Beji Caid Essebsi has no legitimacy to set policy.

Te army has proven to be a crucial organization in the Middle East uprisings in whichthe decision to re or not on the citizens is a turning point in the course o the intadas.In unisia the army supported the protestors but stayed non-political. It is at the service

o the civilian authorities which now consists o the people. Te army is unlikely to takeover though i indecision continues and becomes anarchy individuals within the armymay attempt to do so.

Te police represent another orce o order. Te army is 35000 strong while the policeare 150000 strong and are divided. At times they attempted to bring order by sidingwith the protestors while at other times they were harsh with the protestors. In act thearmy sometimes pushed the police back as they tried to quash demonstrations. Toughit is unclear where the police are headed it is clear that they represent an organized and

sizeable body o people that is needed to help ll the power vacuum. Tough the police donot usually take over in circumstances such as these it is not inconceivable as the policerepresent a structured orce and politics look or structured orces.


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Another organizational element in the unisian uprising that is rarely mentioned is itsgrassroots order namely neighborhood organizations. Tese groups ensured their ownorder through neighborhood watches that prevented people rom breaking into houseson a given block. Tese neighborhood groups are not oen ound in villages but are in

large urban centers such as unis. Tus they do not constitute a national orce and theyare unlikely to reach a higher political level than they did during the uprising but it is ointerest to note their existence.

In unisia aer the uprising spontaneity and disorder vie with pockets o orderpo-tential presumptive order that provides a semblance o structure until the elections oc-cur. Unless these various orces begin to battle each other or unless the absence o somekind o authority becomes too prolonged anarchy is not likely. Essentially a broad-basedcaretaker government is in place to bring about elections. It has now been more than

six months since Ben Ali ed and elections have not taken place. Parties organized andorganizing are hotly debating the countrys uture aer a quarter centurys absence. Butthe young uprisers are getting impatient with the discussion and the indecisiveness othe weak government. Tere are ewer not more jobs than beore and gangs take mattersinto their own hands rom time to time. Early elections are needed but the parties are notready or them. When they occur they will be or a constituent assembly which is neededto enter into more debates over the shape o the new order but is not qualied to makesubstantive policy.

At the time o unisias intiada two groups o people in the Arab world watched theevents closely: the people and the rulers. Te people knew that they had many o the samegrievances that unisians did. Tey asked themselves What are the risks that I take bygoing out in the streets? Egyptians Yemenis Bahrainis Libyans Syrians and otherstookand are takingthat risk. Te governments or the most part say that the unrestis due to economics and is organized by hoodlums and zealots and that they are still incontrol. But the reason or the revolutions is not economics and the people in the streetsnow at mortal risk are not hoodlums and religious anatics. Rather these uprisings arespontaneous revolts led by the youth and ollowed by the rest o society against arrogant

insulting and repressive governments.


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19

thE dEmocratIc snoWball

and thE rEvolutIons of thE arab World

Gamal Eid, Founder and Executive Director of the Arabic Network for HumanRights Information, Cairo, Egypt

Translated by Nehad Khader

IntroductIonTe true beginning o the democratic movements in unisia Egypt and beyond was in2005. Tis was the year that Egypt witnessed the rst presidential elections (albeit rigged)the movement or an independent judiciary and the appearance o the Keaya movement.Egyptian bloggers started to use their blogs to mobilize people. When protestors slept inthe streets o the judicial district to support the movement or an independent judiciarythe calls to gather happened entirely on the Internet. Te use o the Internet as a tool oprotest continued until it exploded with the Arab Spring in early 2011. New media thusplayed an important role in the uprisingsbut it must be noted that the Internet does not

create revolutions but supports them.

thE dEvElopmEnt of thE IntErnEt In thE arab World

Te Arab world has a collective population o 330 million people. From 2004 to 2006 thenumber o Internet users in the region increased rom 12 million to 26 million. In Decem-ber 2009 this number reached 58 million and it increased to 74 million a year later. Sixtypercent o these users are located in three countries: Egypt Morocco and Saudi Arabiawhich according to a February 2011 report have 24 million 10 million and 10 million us-ers respectively. From 2005-2010 65 percent o those arrested in the Arab world because

o their writingsindividuals also known as prisoners o opinionwere detained as aresult o expressing themselves on the Internet either on websites orums blogs or morerecently Facebook and witter. For instance 44 letters and an image created a state secu-rity case in Bahrain against the activist and head o the Bahrain Center or Human RightsNabeel Rajab who in April 2011 published a photo on witter o a victim o torture whohad died in Bahrain with the help o the Saudi government.

Despite political cleavages between regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Libya or Moroccoand Algeria Arab governments have banded together in their quest to control the use o

the Internet. From 1993 through 2010 Arab interior ministers met annually without ailin unisia. Te meetings were oen described as consisting o the Arab Police Unionand they specically ocused on the Internet aer 2001. Saudi Arabia Bahrain Syria andpre-revolution unisia are the most stringent countries in terms o blocking websites. In


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2005 unisian youth especially those living abroad created a website called binalik orBen Ali Wake Up. Te site was blocked within 18 hours. In April 2010 Egyptian youthresiding in the United States created a website to support Mohamed ElBaradei and SaudiArabia blocked the site 15 hours aer it was launched.

Te number o Facebook users in the Arab world has grown considerablyrom two mil-lion in 2008 to 18 million in December 2010. Te April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt hadmuch to do with this increase. On 6 April 2008 young Egyptian activists used Facebookto organize a labor strike in the large industrial city o Mahalla. Te strike was successulturning into something resembling an uprising thus showing the useulness o Facebookto support protests. Te Arabic Network or Human Rights Inormation estimates thatFacebooks inuence in the unisian and Egyptian revolutions has caused the number ousers to surpass 25 million people. As or witter the Arab country that exemplies the

best use o it is unisia which was inspired by the Iranian experience in 2009.

Facebook has attracted the attention o governments such as Gamal Mubarak the sono the ormer Egyptian dictator. Aer the April 6 Youth Movement Gamal also tried topromote himsel via Facebook. However because the people who were posting items werehis employees their activities lacked spirit. For example I might read an academic articlethat is very well written but lacks spirit and I can read another article that is ull o spell-ing mistakes and lacks logic but exudes spirit. Tis phenomenon is what made the youthmore successul with Facebook than Gamal and his group.

But beore Facebook and witter came orums and blogs. Forums appeared at the end othe 1990s and blogs appeared aer 2005at which time we saw Arab youth using themto deend democracy. O course bloggingwith the advent o RSSallowed those whowere writing about the same issues to be in touch with each other. In Gul countries suchas Oman Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as well as in Algeria Facebook witter and blogsare all available but orums continue to be the greatest means or dialogue among youth.Youube is another platorm that appeared years ago and continues to be utilized in theArab world particularly among Kuwaiti youth. Initially most users looked to Youube

or entertainment or pornography but with the advent o the Arab revolutions its use haschanged. Syrians have become the most ardent users o Youube uploading material theylm with their cell phones. Tough Bashar al-Assads regime oen blocks the InternetSyrian youth still upload their videos to Youube when they have the opportunity.

a tool for dEmocracy In thE facE of opprEssIon

Why did the Internet become a tool or supporting democracy? All Arab dictatorshipshave governments that control traditional newspaper journalism and censor content.elevision and radio are also under the control o such governments. Te two most impor-

tant satellites in the Arab world are Nilesat and Arabsat which are primarily controlled byEgypt and Saudi Arabia; as a result it has been dicult or alternative satellite channels toappear. Te Internet however is harder to control.


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Egypt conscious o its image abroad implemented the Free Internet Initiative in 2003 andallowed the Internet to run unblocked. Te Initiative allowed ree connection and thegovernment also permitted the purchase o cheap computer parts to be paid or in install-ments. But the Egyptian government envisioned a specic type o Internet use: marketing

or entertainment. And it punished those who used it or other purposes. For exampleone could write critical statements regarding a minister or a police ocer on ones blogor Facebook page and the authorities would let the matter go without blocking the site.However they might kidnap or detain the writer through the emergency law subject himor her to torture or abricate a court case. Imprisonment could last or two months due toa pending investigation that would never result in an actual case. But the youth contin-ued to use the Internet to support their democratic aspirations.

On 26 June 2006 Egyptian youth organized the rst protest calling or democracy in ront

o the Ministry o the Interior and the State Security Investigation Services (SSI) usingInternet mobilization. Aerward traditional media outlets such as Al Jazeera started topay attention to these youths particularly during the rst day o Eid al-Fitr o 2007 whenmass sexual harassment occurred in Egypt. Groups o young men surrounded womentouching them and trying to strip them o their clothing. Activists used their cell phonecameras to document these events and they published them on their blogs. Tough thegovernment continued to deny the events the existence o the videoswhich appeared

via several satellite channelsorced it to conront the assaults. (But the government alsoocused on the blogger activists. Every time the name o one o them was revealed the

government brought people in to snitch against him or her.)

Cell phone videos made by those in power themselves can also work to activists advan-tage. At the end o 2007 an Egyptian police ocer began to arrest a bus driver who re-sponded condently with the statement You have no right to arrest meshow me thewarrant. Te police ocer ordered his colleagues to strip the bus driver o his clothesand then sexually assaulted him all the while lming him with a cell phone. Te ocerpermitted the circulation o this three-minute video in the neighborhood with the goalo humiliating the bus driver. Te video ell into the hands o a blogger named Mohamed

Khaled who sent it to Wael Abbas another Egyptian blogger known or posting videos opolice brutality and government corruption who published it on his blog. Journalists andlawmakers who visited Abbas blog placed a request or the names o the ocer and driverinAl Fajrnewspaperand they received many responses.

Te case went to court and the ocer was eventually sentenced to three years in prisonor torture. Te court case took place not because the Egyptian government respects thelaw but due to the involvement o the international media which was responding to thedocumentation o the event via the video. (Indeed the government under Mubarak was

concerned enough about its image in the United States that it had a section at the Egyptianembassy devoted to monitoring how Egypt was being portrayed in the American press.) Tethree-year sentence was an important step in that it became easier or people to believe hu-man rights organizations when they stated that torture is systemic in Egypt.


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Outside o Egypt the most important case o exposing corruption through the cell phonecamera was in Morocco where a young man would stand in public places on corners andin the streets and lm trac police as they took bribes rom would-be ticketed drivers.He lmed 14 videos and uploaded them on Youube and to his blog which were viewed 12

million times. Tough such corruption is widespread the government does not acknowl-edge itand does not wish to have it advertised. He eventually became the most wantedperson by the Moroccan police.

unisian youth have also used the Internet skil lully in their ght against corruption. BenAlis regime was similar to the regimes o Bashar al-Assad Saddam Hussein and Moam-mar Qadda in that the opposition took place predominately outside the nations borders.For example Sami Ben Gharbia a unisian blogger based in the Netherlands used GoogleEarth to create a map o political prisons in unisia and the possible location o specic

prisoners. Ben Gharbia and other youths were also able to track the use o the presidentialairplane through Google Earth. Tey discovered that the plane was not always being usedto transport Ben Ali but was transerring unds or Ben Alis croniesthus demonstratingthe depth o the regimes corruption.

Te Internet can also assist in other orms o participation unlike traditional media. Forinstance i one is araid o attending a protest one can use the Internet to simply orwardinormation about the event through websites and SMS messages. One can also create agroup on Facebook and i one works as a graphic designer one can create a graphic or a

banner. Tus the Internet gives anyone the ability to participate according to his or herown capacity.

Also in countries where websites are regularly blocked youth have implemented oth-er creative methods o dialogue and resistance. In Saudi Arabia where the governmentblocks approximately 15 percent o websitessuch as blogs news websites and humanrights websitesbecause o Islamic principles youth use the site o the Saudi televisionchannel Al Arabiya which the Saudi government is not likely to block. Because the web-site enables comments the youth use the comments section to start a public conversation

deep into the list. Hence one might nd users discussing the dismissal o a Saudi ocialat the point at which 2000 comments have already been posted. One might also nd thatcomment #112 is in response to #15 and that comment #600 is criticizing #30 and so on.

thE rEvolutIon

Te unisian revolution pushed the Egyptians. But the call or a protest in Egypt on 25January 2011Police Daywas only or a protest against the police on their holiday nota revolution. Te primary groups that called or the protest were the youth who were in-censed at the murder o Khaled Said who was beaten to death by police ocers in June o

2010 and the April 6 Youth. No one knew the creator o the Khaled Said group on Face-bookWael Ghonim o Googleuntil aer 25 January. But the unisian revolution gaveall Arabs including the Egyptians the hope that they too could take action. In Egyptmany had supported the unisian activists and this was evident through witter. In act


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most o the tweets about the protestswith the hashtag #sidibouzid named or the citywhere 26-year-old unemployed college graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set himsel on recame rom Egypt.

unisian youth living abroad tweeted advice to unisians taking part in the protests suchas telling them to bring an onion or vinegar and a wet cloth to help oset the eects o teargas. Egyptians beneted rom these teachings. Ben Ali ell on 14 January and the Egyp-tian revolution began on 25 January. unisians then started to present their experienceson witter. Tough posts were evident on Facebook the true backing o the Egyptianrevolution rom unisians was through witter.

Te Internets helpul role in the revolutions may be illustrated by the ollowing example.Te majority o the slogans that many saw on Al Jazeera during the protests came rom

Egyptian and other Arab witter eeds. We read them and brought the ideas into thestreets. Te most amous slogan Te people want to topple the regime (Ash-shab yuridisqat an-nizam) came rom unisia. But there were also slogans regarding Mubarak suchas We will not leave until he leaves (Huwwa yimshi, mish ha-nimshi). Imagine ourmillion people in ahrir Square two million in Alexandria and approximately a millionin the Suez repeating the slogan Leave means depart you are not that smart (Irhalya ni imshi yalli ma-btifamshi).

When the Arab dictatorships permit the use o the Internet the people use it to gather

to publicize the presence o the police and to give advice on how to protest and protectonesel. And when the governments turn o the Internet people go into the streets ineven larger numbers to see what is happening and to express their anger. Tis happenedin unisia and Egypt and it is now happening in Syria. In act the Syrian protests areincreasing. Te people are not going to remain at home.


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CCAS Occasional Papers are essays, lectures, research notes,and other items of interest to students, scholars, and friends ofGeorgetown Universitys Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.The views expressed are solely those of the author.

For a complete list of CCAS Papers, see http://ccas.georgetown.edu/research/papers.


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For more than 35 years, Georgetown Universitys Centeror Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) has enjoyed international

recognition as a leader in research, teaching, and scholarship aboutArab society, culture, and politics. At a time when it is especially urgentto comprehend the historical and sociopolitical specicities and trans-ormations o the Arab world in all o their complexity, CCAS has playeda key role in illuminating the dynamic interaction o the Arab worldwith the West. CCAS is helping to prepare new generations o scholars,diplomats, business leaders, teachers, citizens, and policymakers capableo critical thought, constructive dialogue, and creative engagement withthe riches and challenges o the contemporary Arab world.

Te Center, located in the nations capital, is distinguished by its rigorousArabic language training. It is part o Georgetown Universitys EdmundA. Walsh School o Foreign Service, the oldest school o international a-airs in the United States. In recognition o the Centers rst decade o ex-cellence the late senator J. William Fulbright observed in 1985 that withremarkable oresight, Georgetown University moved to ll the need orunderstanding the Arab people by creating the Center or Contempo-rary Arab Studies...ofering a signicant contribution to our country.

Since 1997, CCAS has ormed the core o Georgetown Universitys Na-

tional Resource Center on the Middle East, unded by a itle Vl grantrom the U.S. Department o Education. Few regions o the world nowcommand as much attention as the Arab world. CCAS has ostered deep-er understanding o this vital area with energy and distinction, illuminat-ing the lives and experiences o the Arabs today, while also researchingthe uture role o the Arabs in a changing and challenging world.


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