David McMurray - The Arab Revolts: Dispatches on Militant Democracy in the Middle East

Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa

Paul Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg, editors

Published in association with
Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)

DISPATCHES ON MILITANT DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Edited by David McMurray and Amanda Ufheil-Somers

Indiana University Press
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ISBN 978-0-253-00968-5 (cloth)

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Nadia Marzouki

Amy Aisen Kallander

Christopher Alexander

Stephen Juan King

Laryssa Chomiak and John P. Entelis

Francesco Cavatorta and Rikke Hostrup Haugblle

Mona El-Ghobashy

Timothy Mitchell

Joel Beinin and Hossam el-Hamalawy

Hesham Sallam

Issandr El Amrani

Shana Marshall and Joshua Stacher

Sheila Carapico

Sheila Carapico

Sarah Phillips

Susanne Dahlgren

Stacey Philbrick Yadav

Carsten Wieland

Bassam Haddad

Christian Sinclair and Sirwan Kajjo

Donatella Della Ratta

Peter Harling and Sarah Birke

Cortni Kerr and Toby Jones

Joe Stork

Sandy Russell Jones

Justin Gengler

Gregg Carlstrom

We would like to thank Ted Swedenburg and Paul Silverstein for getting this project up and running, and Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report, for his essential input throughout the process. Rebecca Tolen, our sponsoring editor at Indiana University Press, provided valuable guidance in shaping this study. Thank you to Karen Mills, Executive Secretary, and Susan Shaw, Interim Director, both in the School of Language, Culture and Society at Oregon State University, for providing much-needed funds for the completion of the book.

Most importantly, this project would not exist without the generosity and enthusiasm of the contributing authors. Thank you.

DAVID MCMURRAY AND AMANDA UFHEIL-SOMERS

On December 17, 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, to protest the humiliation and loss of income visited upon him by the Tunisian police. What Bouazizi experienced was a routine act of petty harassment, the kind of indignity suffered daily by thousands of inhabitants across North Africa and the Middle East. But this time they didnt take it lying down. Spontaneous outbursts of popular support and action by the Tunisian trade union movement turned the tragic event into an insurrection that brought down the government of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14.

Within days of the fall of Ben Alis regime in Tunisia, Egyptian protesters were filling public spaces in Cairo, Port Said, Alexandria and smaller cities, energized by the news and images pouring in from Tunis. Wildcat strikes, massive protests and occupations of public space brought down the regine of Husni Mubarak on February 11.

News of events in Tunisia reverberated as far away as Sanaa, Yemen where it helped launch protests in January calling for the removal from power of President Ali Abdallah Salih. Youth kept the movement going. They were eventually joined by oppositional political parties. The regime responded violently to the protests using live ammunition and large amounts of tear gas against demonstrators; fifty unarmed demonstrators were killed in Sanaa on one day in March 2011. This hardened the demands of the protesters and alienated a good share of the Yemeni public. Salih managed to hold onto power for another year butafter narrowly surviving an assassination attempt in June 2011eventually reached an agreement to resign from the presidency and retire to New York, which he did in January 2012.

By February 14, 2011 the events in North Africa had emboldened large segments of the Shii majority in Bahrain who organized mass protests and the occupation of Pearl Square in the capital of Manama. The protesters demanded the implementation of political reforms by the Sunni monarchy that would guarantee political representation and rights to the majority, ending discrimination against the Shia. In the early morning of February 17, soldiers using live ammunition raided the encampment, killing four. The protests swelled in the aftermath of the attack, as pro-government demonstrations were launched in response. On March 14 the Bahraini king declared a national emergency and invited Saudi troops to enter the country and crush the protest movement. A year later, the movement remained in a state of limbo over a year later with pro-government and anti-government forces refusing to talk while state security and anti-government protesters engaged in periodic street battles.

March 2011 also saw the beginnings of insurrection in Syria, inspired by the revolts of Tunisia and Egypt. Unlike Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia, in Syria an opposition did not rapidly coalesce and engage large sections of the country in revolt. Instead, resistance built up over months. When a group of young teenagers in the town of Daraa were arrested and tortured on March 15 for spray painting anti-regime slogans on school walls, residents took to the streets to protest the security forces overreaction. This event rippled throughout the country, leading to larger protests met with greater violence and repression until much of Syria had been pulled into a spiral of violence that has continued for over a year with no end in sight.

The 2011 eruptions of popular discontent in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria represent local manifestations of a regional mass movement for democracy, freedom and human dignity. In a region ruled by varying forms of authoritarianism since the end of European colonialism, the insurrectionary spark from Tunisia ignited a fiery mix of anger and hope that had been heretofore suppressed. Aided by newer forms of transnational communication and cultural exchange like Al Jazeera and satellite television, people across the Arab world saw the problems of corrupt, anti-democratic government and growing poverty multiplied across the region. A shared sense of sufferinga perhaps unexpected corollary of pan-Arabismunited people across national boundaries and strengthened the idea of the people (