Arab Spring: A New Beginning?

European politicians have been struggling to deal with the unexpected political changes in North Africa and the Middle East, the largest global upheaval since the1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Optimists may feel that the Jasmine Revolution (the name given to the uprising in Tunisia, after the country‘s national symbol) has not brought the hoped-for results, but the region‘s democratisation is still continuing apace. Within a very short space of time, three dictators have disappeared off the map. This flies in the face of the widespread belief – both at home and abroad – that they would remain in power for the rest of their natural lives. These were Muammar al-Gaddafi, who wa s in power for 42 years; Hosni Mubarak, president for 30 years; and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali after 24 years at the helm. It would also seem that the days of Yemen‘s Ali Abdullah Salih (in power since 1978) and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad (since 2000) are similarly numbered.

The value of the first (partially) free elections in the Maghreb and Mashriq is not altered by the fact that they have led to political Islam gaining majority representation. And it would be fatal if Europe‘s concerns about stability and security in the Middle East led it to throw itself into the arms of the Saudi monarchy or allowed the Egyptian military leadership to play the Algerian card by cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood and once again persecuting political Islam.

The Arab revolution began in January 2011 with the uprising in Tunisia, which had been ruled for decades by the kleptocratic regime of the Ben Ali family. It was triggered by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, a town 250 kilometres south of the capital on the peripheries of Tunisia and the Arab/Islamic world. 

This act of self-immolation sparked a global media frenzy on television, youTube and Twitter because it presented the story of the Arab revolution in a nutshell. It just needed a tiny spark to ignite the powder keg. At its core, it was not about religion or family honour, but about dignity, freedom – and work.

Straight out of the textbook, the spectrum covers every form of transition from dictatorship to democracy. These include self-enlightenment on the part of the ruler (Morocco); power-sharing between old and new elites (Egypt); large-scale replacement of the political leadership (Libya, Tunisia); ethnic and religious civil war (Syria); and external military or police intervention (Libya, Bahrain).

In any case, the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) as a whole is a geopolitical construct in the tradition of European Orientalism (and analogous to the residual category of Central and Eastern Europe during the transition process after 1990). The differences between the social structures of Morocco and the Gulf States are too wide; the prosperity and development gaps too large; the religious background too diverse, not only in terms of Sunnis and Shiites, but also with regard to the different types of regimes and their degrees of secularisation.

The region is bound together by two things: its impregnation with the Islamic tradition (hence the popular slogan, ‚Islam is the solution!‘); and the separation of men and women and a pronounced homophobia that affects people‘s everyday lives and work. Many proponents of Islam as the solution derive these views from their religion.

The MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) as a whole is a geopolitical construct in the tradition of European Orientalism.

And despite the fabulous oil wealth of some of these countries, the region is generally characterised by its low levels of human development and predominantly authoritarian and patriarchal regimes. The success of the transition is certainly not guaranteed, but the democracy movement is not dead and civil society has established itself in most areas, though of course without succeeding in shaking the autocratic structures or taming the forces of radical Islam.

Prior to 2010, the dogma of Arab authoritarianism was well-established, but since then social mobilisation and political change have demonstrated that Arab societies can indeed encompass civil and political freedoms and the political participation of women. There has been a widespread changing of the guard, and Arab societies have become more civil, including moves towards an independent judiciary, greater freedom of opinion, and increased artistic and academic freedom.

It was extremely frustrating for the protesters and for many Western observers that the demands of the urban protest movements in Tunisia and Egypt did not translate into electoral success for those political forces that had neither grown out of the old regimes nor wished to be part of the Islamist camp. But the political transition after the Velvet Revolution in Eastern and Central Europe was not so different. It generally took the form of power-sharing between post-communists and an opposition that was often equally religious and ethno-nationalist, while the civil rights movements splintered and found themselves unable to attract lasting support among the public at large. Even in stabilised post-autocratic societies, it has often taken a long time for an effective third party to emerge and vie for power, or indeed – as in Romania and Bulgaria – this is a development that is still awaited.

It would be fatal if Europe‘s concerns about stability and security in the Middle East led it to throw itself into the arms of the Saudi monarchy or allowed the Egyptian military leadership to play the Algerian card by cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood and once again persecuting political Islam.

It seems likely that special Islamic forms of democracy will emerge and take root (as has been the case in Turkey, under different circumstances), which will be able to deal with spethe unease felt towards Western lifestyles and politics without disguising or reversing this Western influence on traditions in every area of society.

When the situation escalated in Libya, Syria and the Gulf, Europe had no mechanism for coordinated decision-making. The EU also had no Plan B for the MENA region, because it’s diplomacy was fixated on stability and normality, preferring to maintain the status quo rather than think about ‚unlikely‘ situations and worst case scenarios. From this comes the sense of amazement that there can actually be a post-Mubarak and post-Gaddafi era.

So this diplomacy is totally turned in on itself; public diplomacy that included civil society in the MENA region was an unknown quantity and even today seems strange, apart from the German example of the activities of the political foundations, the Goethe-Institut and certain government-related think tanks such as the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. 

A more coherent German foreign policy means that agendas such as Iran's nuclear armament and the Israel-Palestine conflict continue to be discussed and negotiated without much regard for the new situation. It also means that the special role of Turkey in the MENA region has not been considered and used to best effect. We should not ignore the fact that the former Ottoman superpower has been gaining respect in the region over recent years. The AKP‘s moderate Islamism could be a role model for the transformation of the Arab regimes, while the Iranian influence (via Syria and Hamas) is fading. 

In short, European countries and the EU need to increase their involvement in the region compared to what they have been prepared to do in the past. The aforementioned loss of influence on the part of the USA and Russia also contributes to this, along with China‘s reluctance to get involved, but above all it comes down to Europe‘s geopolitical position. One-size-fits-all solutions and panaceas for the whole region are quite inappropriate, but it is time for diplomacy to get itself into gear. It is time for a genuine common foreign and security policy and better-coordinated crisis management that includes civil society partners.

European countries and the EU need to increase their involvement in the region compared to what they have been prepared to do in the past.

Instead of exaggerating this parting of the ways by calling it a ‚clash of civilisations‘, we should remember the empirical multitude of everyday contacts, phenomenological intersections and theological/intellectual interactions, along with the syncretism and conversions between the monotheistic religious cultures of the Mediterranean region from late antiquity to the early modern era.

Judaism in particular played the role of mediator in this respect and despite all the conflicts and wars there were still phases of spiritual and everyday Convivencia (the name given to the period of peaceful co-existence between Jews, Christians and Muslims in Spain before 1492). Although we should guard against romanticising this period, today it is still expedient to misuse the ongoing historical tensions and sporadic exclusions as excuses for a clash of civilisations.

Overall, it is clear that a large number of the young protesters in 2011 – even if they were not oriented towards European policy – „were considering the liberal and democratic values represented by Europe quite naturally as their own and hence underscoring their universality“, to quote the words of Middle East expert Volker Perthes. „To some extent, Europe has received political support from a region where it would no doubt least have expected it. This is one reason why Europe’s interest in achieving successful democratic transition in the Arab world should be as intense as it was twenty years ago on Eastern Europe.“

The periphery of Europe, the EU Member States and candidate countries that have been worst affected by the euro zone crisis and the societies of North Africa and the Middle East that find themselves in a state of upheaval do not pose a threat to the European Union‘s economic stability, political security and cultural identity. Insolvency, Islamism, illegal activity – this is the distorted picture that has been presented for years, but it is now in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy if, beginning with Greece, the European Union begins to disintegrate and a shrunken core Europe seals itself off from the Arab world‘s transformation.

Yet their spiritual and phenomenological inspiration remains uninterrupted and sufficiently alive for a new Convivencia of cultures and religions that has been forgotten as a result of fierce clashes of civilisations and bloody exercises of purification and that has been abandoned as being laughable, despite its sterling work as an interpreter of European and global culture. 

This loss teaches us that political union between Europe, Africa and Asia in the Mediterranean region is not to be achieved via imperial hegemony or nationalistic competition but through the cooperation of its urban agglomerations. Not primarily through the economy and statehood but through new cultural interpretation activities and knowledge-sharing. But has anyone heard about the Euro-Mediterranean Universities that are being established in Piran in Slovenia and Fez in Morocco?

This loss teaches us that political union between Europe, Africa and Asia in the Mediterranean region is not to be achieved via imperial hegemony or nationalistic competition but through the cooperation of its urban agglomerations.

If the governments of the Euromediterranee are treated with respect and as equals, the aforementioned future policy areas can be brought together: Then there may be a trans-Mediterranean energy union stretching towards sub-Saharan Africa, a marine governance that intelligently combines protection and utilisation, a fair division of labour, particularly in agricultural production, a shift towards sustainable tourism and above all intercultural learning. 

These are the rudiments of concrete utopias or a European future in the South. Of course their realisation depends on two other major factors that finally have to be dealt with here: firstly, the quantum leap to a United States of Europe that must not be allowed to exhaust itself in the Directorate of a Brussels-based economic government, but that gains legitimacy through parliamentary control and the participation of civil society that then establishes a true European Demos. And secondly, Europe in the South and the North must extricate itself from the primitive control of the financial markets. What else but a political union of Europe and the Mediterranean can free the world from purely profit-related thinking and point the way towards a modern exchange of gifts?