Tag Archives: Arab spring

A New Game of Dominoes

Remember the domino theory? The United States went into Vietnam because, if Vietnam fell to communism, it would knock others into the communist orbit.

We lost that war, and a domino game indeed plays out—just not the one we envisioned. Instead, Ben Barber writes, “Today’s dominoes are not allies of Beijing or Moscow, nor do they practice central state economic planning. They are crony-capitalist, one-party states. (“Authoritarianism Gains in Southeast Asia,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2018).

With the possible exception of Tunisia, the Arab spring attempt to establish democracy in North Africa and the Middle East has been a failure. Autocracies, like Saudi Arabia, says Barber, “kept the lid on and ensured domestic peace, at the cost of stifling the tender shoots of democracy.”

We “liberated” Iraq, but the vacuum created by that liberation led to all sorts of mayhem, including the Islamic State.

We fought proxy wars, which usually failed. By contrast, during the days of the original domino theory, we never fought the Soviet Union directly. Instead, we strengthened our own nation so that, for a time, people who worked hard could buy homes and send their children to college and start businesses of their own. That kind of policy defeated the Soviet Union.

Our war in Southeast Asia lost the lives of thousands of Americans and a million and more lives of civilians. Our reward, says Barber, was crony capitalism in those countries.

Now, one after the other, more nations are choosing capitalism—the worst kind. They are choosing capitalism without the laws and the oversight of democracy.

Unstoppable Democracy?

In the euphoric years following 1989, the year the Soviet Union began unraveling, many observers believed democracy was set on an unstoppable course. That view prevailed for many years.

According to a Washington Post article in 2013, however, more countries registered declines than gains in democratic practices over the course of 2012. It marked “the seventh consecutive year in which countries with declines outnumbered those with improvements.”

Among Arab countries, after the widely hailed “Arab Spring,” only Tunisia appears to have retained a democratic form of government. Others headed in that direction have now backtracked. Egypt got rid of a dictator, but its first elected government disappointed many. A military general took over, after shedding his uniform, which fooled no one.

Libya has fallen into warring militias. Syria is a brutal nightmare. The Gulf countries have kept their royals. Algeria and other countries in the region limp along with few changes.

How to revive the democratic movement? Since the United States prides itself on being Exhibit A for representative government, Americans might start there. How about campaign financing? After all, we can hardly berate other countries for their corrupt practices if our own politicians are bought by the highest bidder.

Learning from Jesus’ Stories in Today’s Conflicts; Guest Blog by Dr. Lloyd Johnson

 

I met Dr. Lloyd Johnson at the Northwest Christian Writers Association Renewal conference in May. We discovered a mutual interest in Middle East issues, though with different emphases.

Following are excerpts from the bio on Dr. Johnson’s blog  http://lloydjohnson.org/

“Following the man of Galilee, and learning from Jesus’ stories, I began to write tales about people struggling with the issues in their lives and the current conflicts in that part of the world.  We in the United States learn of the Arab Spring but have little information about ordinary people’s daily lives in Israel and the West Bank.

Previously, as Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington,  I taught and practiced general and thoracic surgery in Seattle for many years . . . . Additionally I worked as Professor of Surgery at the Haile Selassie I University in Gondar, Ethiopia for three years.  I served for two years in the U.S. Air Force as a flight surgeon,  and volunteered in hospitals for several weeks each in Kenya, India, and in Pakistan with Afghan refugees.”

Here is one of Dr. Johnson’s entries, posted on June 16, 2012

“THOSE WHO CANNOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT.”

from George Santayana (1863 – 1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

Memory is a gift.  When you wake up in the morning, you may still remember what happened yesterday—or 20 years ago.  Sleep does not erase it.  Like memory in your computer, it should still be there on re-start.  You need the anchor of memory to know who you are and how you relate to the rest of the world around you.

Santayana addressed long term recollections of history, ours or others, that are crucial to teach us how to live in the present.  We can choose to learn from the past or not.  Both the good and the bad events.  Father’s Day brings inspiring memories to me.  Many are not so fortunate to have had a loving dad.  But at age 18 I lost him tragically, to a drunk driver. Devastated, I learned to forgive and not live in bitterness.  The past is history, only to inform the present, not paralyze it.

Paul, the famous Jewish apostle, wrote to his friends in Philippi, “Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on…”  He had much to forget—persecution to death of Jesus followers, and then becoming one himself, his own beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments and finally execution.  He determined to not let the past poison his life, or that of others.

“Never again” is the appropriate slogan for remembering the Holocaust.  But how do its survivors and their descendants deal with those memories?  Perhaps some do forget.  Others forgive and move on.  But dwelling on the tragedy seems to fuel Zionism’s fires to burn others.  Quoting from Jewish writer, Mark Braverman:

“…Israeli writer Avraham Burg sees the Holocaust as the central reality for Israel—infecting every aspect of daily life and even driving government policy:

‘In our eyes, we are still partisan fighters, ghetto rebels, shadows in the camps, no matter the nation, state, armed forces, gross domestic product, or international standing.  The Shoah is our life, and we will not forget it and we will not let anyone forget us.  We have pulled the Shoah out of its historic context and turned it into a plea and a generator for every deed.  All is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and therefore all is allowed—be it fences, sieges,…curfews, food and water deprivation, or unexplained killings…Everything seems dangerous to us…(2008, 78′” Braveman’s page 87

“Our world-view—our attitude toward the other—is so totally conditioned by our sense of our entitlement, undergirded by the idée fixe of our eternal victimhood, that we cannot see the other except as a threat that must be neutralized.”   Braverman’s “Fatal Embrace,” page 93.

Does a historic ethnic abuse seven decades ago justify another now, the oppressed becoming the oppressors?

 

After the Revolution Comes the Hard Part

 

Social media played a decisive role in kindling the recent revolutions in the Middle East. Now the hard part begins.  A revolution requires courage, to be sure, but a courage more often based on emotion than on reason.

Today’s revolutions accelerate with the instant communication of Facebook and text messages. Building a new nation requires a quieter courage: a patience to examine complex issues and an ability to find compromise between competing views of a nation’s future.

The revolutionists in Egypt and Tunisia vanquished corrupt dictators. Now can they survive the hard slogging? Compromise on cherished views to include the views of others? Set up impartial courts and rules of law that discourage the same corruption that bedeviled the old regimes?

Thomas L. Friedman, writing in the New York Times (June 9, 2012) compared the different processes as Facebook meeting “brick-and-mortar” politics.

Our country formally gained independence from Great Britain in 1783. But the first structure we accepted for the new country, the Articles of Confederation, failed. After a fierce struggle between competing factions, we began again with the creation of the U.S. Constitution, ratified by Rhode Island, the final former colony to do so, in 1790. It’s an amendable document, meaning that the founders of the nation knew it wasn’t perfect and never would be.

As Egyptians pick themselves up from an election that proved less than ideal, can they go to work with what they have so far produced?

Can we Americans survive our own paralyzing politics?

He May Be a Brutal Dictator, But He’s Our Brutal Dictator

 

The Cold War between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and anti-communist nations led by the United States fades into memory, buried during the late twentieth century revolutions in eastern Europe. Yet similarities linger in the more recent revolutions, the ones where citizens are revolting against tyrannical leaders in the Middle East.

In those earlier times, the U.S. was accused of supporting dictatorial regimes in certain African and South American countries because the regimes touted themselves as anti-communist. Now the U.S. is accused of propping up former dictators like Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. These men clamped down on the growth of Islamists in their countries, so we supported them even if they employed brutal methods. Egypt, especially, became a huge recipient of U.S. aid.

Have such policies backfired as newly-freed citizens elect their own governments, seemingly more attuned to the Islamists? Was it better when we supported corrupt leaders who became wealthy by showering their cronies with public largesse? Who didn’t quibble at torturing their own people?

We don’t know if the new Islamists will continue to support democratic elections once in power. We don’t know if they will allow religious freedom. Perhaps if we had been less supportive of the former dictators who tortured them, the new governments now would be more supportive of our policies. In that earlier confrontation with the Soviet Union, at least the eastern Europeans knew we were on their side and became our friends once they gained their freedom.

We should question both the wisdom and the morality of giving support to inhumane governments. (As we now accuse the Russians of doing with Syria.) It can lead to disastrous consequences later.

 

Welcome to Democracy

 

I search news reports for clues about a country’s first encounters with democracy. That country is Tunisia, where I once lived and worked. I scan the recent pictures. When I lived there, few women, and no younger ones, wore the head scarf.  Most of them dressed like counterparts on the streets of Paris. Now the head scarf appears more often. Plenty of women do not wear it, but it still surprises me that some do.

Compared to Egypt or Libya, Tunisia’s change from a dictatorship to free elections last year was remarkably smooth. Not completely so. Small groups of ultra-conservative Islamists occupied universities to call for a more religiously-oriented way of life, including the return of the veil for women. Thousands protested the actions of the ultra-conservatives and called for a continuation of Tunisia’s tolerant society.

The moderate Islamist party that won a majority of the vote in elections last year was embarrassed by the ultra-conservatives and pledged that it would not turn Tunisia into a conservative Islamic state.

Winston Churchill once said, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I wish the Tunisians success as they enter the brave, exasperating world of democracy.

Religion and Government

How much should religion and government interact? This issue plays out in the small North African country of Tunisia, a majority Islamic country where I lived from 1997 to 2000.

Tunisians began the “Arab spring” by ousting their secularist dictator little more than a year ago. In January they held their first fair election in years. A mildly Islamist party won the majority of the vote.

The leader of the new government, Hamadi Jebali, spent years in prison for his opposition to the government of dictator Ben Ali, much of it in harsh solitary confinement. Now he’s the popularly elected head of the Tunisian government.

Tunisia has a large, educated middle class, many of whom have made plain that they do not want repressive religious laws. Jebali has indicated his understanding of their apprehension. His party has formed the current government with two secularist parties.

The results in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya, and other countries of North Africa and the Middle East follow the ouster of regimes which were secular but often brutal against their opponents. Now that more power is assumed by the people, how will democracy and religion play their roles?

Some American Christians desire more religion in their government. How will church and state in this country compare to mosque and state in Tunisia?

A Tale of Two Countries

 

Tahrir Square

Almost a year ago, the small nation of Tunisia began the current spate of revolts against despotic regimes in the Middle East. The country recently held its first elections since the overthrow of the country’s one-party rule. The elections appeared to be free, fair, and relatively unmarred by corruption or violence.

By contrast, violence has flared again in Egypt, where elections are held this week. The violence has included the deaths of demonstrators as well as the burning of Christian churches and the killing of Christians. Much of the protest centers on the Egyptian military, against their perceived unwillingness to relinquish power. The military partnered with the Egyptian people in the earlier revolution to rid the country of the corrupt rule of Mubarak, yet now appears unwilling to allow an unfettered civilian government to rule.

This is a recurring theme of newly freed nations. The group which plays the role in ridding the country of tyranny, itself refuses to relinquish power.

What would have happened to our own country if George Washington had followed the usual pattern? He could have used his powers as commander of the American armed forces after he successfully led them to victory over the British to seize power. Instead, he resigned his commission. Later, after two terms as president, he stepped aside, saying two terms was enough. By leaving the office voluntarily and allowing for a peaceful transfer of power, he established a valuable precedent for the country.

The decision of a popular individual to see power as a trust and a refusal to use it for selfish purposes is a rare choice.

Winning the Peace

Tunis Street

Carthage

The small North African country of Tunisia recently held its first free election since leading the Arab world earlier this year in a revolution against regional dictators. My husband and I lived in this progressive Arab country from 1997 until 2000.Nahda, described as a mildly Islamist party, won over forty percent of the vote. Tunisia has a large, educated middle class, some of whom worry that a government controlled by Nahda might weaken the country’s laws dealing with women’s rights. The party’s leaders so far have indicated a willingness to work with the more secular parties and to safeguard Tunisian freedoms.

Nahda was banned during the corrupt, one-party rule of the now deposed Ben Ali. Members risked imprisonment and torture. No wonder they are reveling in the new freedom to compete in an election. They appear to have played by the rules and won their votes fairly. The results of this election will be scrutinized for indications of how the Arab world will shift as other nations take steps toward democracy, including participation by Islamist parties.

Winning the peace can be more difficult than winning the war. In American history, we glorify heroes of our Revolution, but the period after the United States gained its independence was a greater challenge, a time of debilitating partisan struggle. Nation building requires the difficult virtues of servanthood, of putting the country’s welfare above individual or party ambitions.

Perhaps we might reflect on these virtues for our own country in our coming election.

A Tablecloth, Syria, and the Arab Spring

While working in the Middle East, I purchased a tablecloth from Syria, famous for centuries for its lustrous damask fabric. After reading of current atrocities committed in that country, I pull it out and examine it. Cerulean and gold threads form geometric figures against the white background. What has happened to the weavers, I wonder.

Damascus, the capital of Syria, where damask was first produced, is one of the world’s oldest cities. The apostle Paul was on his way to Damascus when he experienced his dramatic conversion (Bible, book of Acts, ninth chapter). Christian tourists still visit the street called Straight, where Paul lodged afterward.

Under the dictatorship of the Assad family since 1970, the country lately has been affected by the Arab spring, the demands for change in other Arab countries. The Assad family’s responses to the uprisings in Syria are especially brutal. They include jailing merely for demonstrating and torture, even of children.

Different ethnic and religious groups inhabit Syria, making the outcome of the rebellion hard to predict. Christians have lived there since Paul’s time. Today they are estimated to make up about ten percent or less of the Syrian population. Despite the Assad family’s harsh rule, Christians have generally been protected from persecution. If the Assad family loses power, what will happen to them?

A hard decision for Christians to make: should they support an inhumane dictatorship in order to preserve their tenuous place in society? Or should they support change, hoping and working toward a more just society when that outcome is not guaranteed?

It is not the first time for Christians to choose between their own comfort and the risk of speaking out against injustice.

 

The Best Laid Plans …

The North African nation of Algeria is one of the nations in the news because of the “Arab spring.” This is the name for the demonstrations against autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa that began with Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year and has rocked Libya.

This is not the first time Algerians have struggled for more control over their own destiny. Algeria was a part of France until the Algerians fought a bloody revolution and became independent in 1962. The Algerians believed that with self-government, they would do great things. This appeared so at first. Algeria was a leader of non-aligned nations during the time of the Cold War between Communist and non-Communist nations. After American embassy hostages were taken by Iranian extremists over three decades ago, they were finally released to the neutral nation of Algeria in the dramatic last days of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Unfortunately, Algeria has since fallen into corruption and insurgency. The people who led its revolution proved unable to give up power when Algerians voted for others. History is littered with such tragedies, like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

When we are given power, we slip easily into the temptation to believe that we have all the answers. We begin with the best of intentions. We are certain that we know better than those who disagree with us. Until we understand that it isn’t “us” against “them,” but rather that “we” are all finite humans, we will make little progress. Always, the gift of power is given temporarily to use in service to all.

When we seek to circumvent the rights of others in order to force our own agenda, we risk being corrupted by our power. Better if we seek to influence rather than to force. Better to listen to all, form a consensus, build a structure that includes investment from as many as possible, not one that can’t support noble aims because its foundation is not broad enough to support the whole.

Many of the Arab nations are struggling against regimes that never learned this lesson. Let us hope and pray for a better outcome this time.