'In the end it's about redistribution'

Madawi Al-Rasheed

MO* - Samira Bendadi

They were euphoric during the first months that followed the fall of Zine Al-Abedine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. The Arabs had regained their pride. But that pride has long since ebbed away and hope turned into disappointment. In the countries where there was a change, some even are nostalgic about the real or imagined ‘good old days’. And in places where the regimes stayed intact, many are glad that their country took a different direction. Is it about an identity crisis? Class warfare? A sectarian problem? Or is it utopian to think that regular people are able to overthrow established systems and build new ones? Madawi Al-Rasheed, a Saudi Arabian academic specialised in the Arabian peninsula, sees little reason for optimism. The problems are gigantic and the road is long and difficult.

How do you look at the Arab revolutions three years after the first protest started in Tunisia?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: The Arab revolutions were from the beginning exceptional. They are specific to the twenty-first century. In contrast with the other revolutions, the Arab revolutions didn’t have a charismatic leader who held an ideology and wanted to assert it. That was new and at the same time, a problem. Instead of a leader we had the people. The charisma of a leader was replaced by the charisma of the people. And this way a new phenomenon grew: the charisma of the square.

Why wasn’t there a leader?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: There was no leader because the different regimes in the region rooted out every form of political protest. All leftist, liberal and nationalist movements were pushed aside. The opposition was limited to that of the Islamist movements. There was no space for a beginning of an alternative leadership. The charisma of the square had a revolutionary spirit, but wasn’t able to develop into an institution that could take over power. People were on Tahrir Square. They wanted to assert themselves. All layers of the population were there. These people weren’t organised. After the fall of the head of the regime they split up.

They split up without the reassurance that what they wanted could be realised.

Madawi Al-Rasheed: They didn’t accomplish their goal because they could not deliver.  A revolution is something aggressive where heads roll and important figures of the old regime are removed. That didn’t happen in the Arab countries, except in Libya, where the revolution was quickly militarised.

What is the balance now? Where does the Arab world stand today?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: Instability is maybe the term that can best describe the situation. It is hard to predict what will happen and that is not so surprising. Revolutions aren’t straight lines from A to Z. There will be moments of falling back. Maybe we’ll return to a null phase, or liberties will be curtailed again. A revolution is something that takes a lot of time. It’s the beginning of a new period. The problem is that people now don’t have patience; we’re only three years after the first revolution. The Arab totalitarian regime is also anchored in the state institutions. The regimes have their people in the justice apparatus, the security services, the intelligence services, the army… And that explains why these people are not successful in wiping the slate clean. What happened in Egypt proves my point. We’re going through pain. There will be periods of decline and maybe these pains will lead to what the Arab people strive for, namely freedom, justice and dignity.

What happened in Egypt is a decline?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: Yes, in all senses of the word. Egypt witnessed the beginning of a democratic experiment that was aborted. In my opinion, Egypt should have waited until the end of the presidential term, or chosen early elections after the division about Morsi. Then we could have seen new faces or a coalition government could’ve been formed that represents the different ideologies in Egyptian society.

But from the beginning it was an or/or story. The Muslim Brotherhood wouldn’t have agreed to early elections.

Madawi Al-Rasheed: The Muslim Brotherhood refused early elections because they reasoned that they had legitimacy and the majority of the votes. But according to me there was a project that was set in motion long ago. It is difficult for a democratic experiment to succeed when it is surrounded by regional powers that want to abort that experiment. Egypt is an important country. From the beginning there was a lot of regional attention on that experiment, especially in the Gulf countries, with Saudi Arabia taking the lead. After only one year there was no space left for Morsi to stay in power. The democratic experiment in Egypt was an indirect danger to the ruling families in the Gulf states, because a democratic Egypt would surely raise questions about the political systems in those countries.

The Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t the driving force behind the revolution, but used the revolution to gain power. Instead of continuing the democratisation of the system, they were turning it into a “Brotherhood state”, critics say.

Madawi Al-Rasheed: I think what happened in Egypt is also an expression of a class conflict. This is also the case in Tunisia. The Arab revolutions brought a new group of people with a different education and culture into power. The men of the Islamist party Annahda in Tunisia are different from the class that was ruling until now. Their vision is also different, and that is often forgotten. In Egypt the judges belong to a certain social class with ties to the previous regime. They saw that they could be marginalised, and for that reason they got rid of the democratic experiment.

It’s a class conflict that took the form of a religious conflict where discussions about Islam were central.

Madawi Al-Rasheed: Look, all conflicts in the Arab world are able to take on a religious character. Whether the conflict is about identity, the Islamic morale or the relation between Islam and the West. These are just, so to say, the windows of conflicts that you can’t see unless you study them thoroughly. The Muslim Brotherhood interpreted the coup as a coup against religion. But how can it be a coup against religion when the majority of Egyptians - whether they are for or against Morsi - is religious? These are rather class conflicts and cultural conflicts and you have these in all societies. The problem in Arab countries is that there is no system where those conflicts can be fought without excluding large groups in the society from that system.

The democratic Egyptian experiment didn’t end well. What is the effect of this on the rest of the Arab world?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: What happened in Egypt caused a double division in the Gulf region. There is a division in public opinion. In Saudi Arabia a part of the population supports the Saudi regime and thinks that the end of the Islamists is something good. Another part says Saudi Arabia is complicit in what happened to many victims among the supporters of Morsi. The coup deepened the gap between the Qatari project and the Saudi project. Saudi Arabia thinks it succeeded in bringing an end to the Qatari dream to turn Egypt into an ally with the Muslim Brotherhood.

And what about the rest of the Arab countries?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: The Egyptian revolution brought an end to the use of violence as a tool for change. The terror project that spread in many countries and which was wrongfully thought to have the support of the population resulted in an impasse. And suddenly there was hope, in the form of peaceful demonstrations. That was a very important moment in the Arab world. Some thought that violence disappeared for good as a means to bring change, leaving space for peaceful activism. But after three years it turned out that peaceful activism is not enough to change the system. We are now in a phase where people don’t even want to know who governs them, as long as they have an income and a can look forward to a future for their children.

You were against the NATO intervention in Libya. How do you look back on it now?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: Unfortunately there was interference in Libya with an Arab cover and with an Arab blessing. In Syria there are also interferences. I think the whole Arab region is under foreign domination and that makes the situation even more complicated. Look at Iraq: it hasn’t known stability since 2003. Every day there are explosions and attacks. Nowadays the news comes from Arab countries. It’s very violent news and that is because global and regional powers fight each other in the region. We have been in this situation since the First World War and we still haven’t gotten out of it.

Are the interferences the biggest problem in the region, as is often said?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: These interferences are part of the problem, but not the whole problem. In the Arab world there is the problem of the current state. The state belongs to a certain group in society. They are family states or tribal states or military states or sectarian states. All states failed. Even nationalist and socialist regimes didn’t succeed in representing all segments of the population. They each privilege certain groups at the expense of others.

Didn’t the revolutions happen to correct that?

Madawi Al-Rasheed: In the Arab world, they talk too much about politics and too little about economics. There’s no economic vision on how to proceed, and this is also the case with the new rulers. And this is the situation while the core of the problems is economic. It’s about the redistribution of wealth, about creating jobs and offering good education. The Arab world is the biggest exporter of migrants, with highly educated migrants as well as unqualified labourers.

In different countries there’s considerable economic growth. And the Gulf states have an enormous amount of means.

Madawi Al-Rasheed: Opening the economy didn’t lead to opening the labour market and didn’t turn the Arab economies into producing economies. It created a society where the best and the latest of what is produced elsewhere is consumed. The old industries are destroyed and what came in their place is the export of natural resources. But the state didn’t succeed in attracting companies that can create employment. Even in the textile industry companies left for Asian countries. Although there is a lot of show: there a building revolution with high towers and luxurious touristic places, but they are just service economies that can easily collapse when there are problems. We talk too much about politics because you need to do politics to improve the economic situation. The problem is we are still dealing with little groups who get benefits that the rest don’t get. If you are closer to power, you get access to facilities. You get priority over others, you get a piece of land at the beach… Even the state is complicit and started selling land.

Madawi Al-Rasheed

MO* - Samira Bendadi

Madawi Al-Rasheed: We are in a difficult situation and I don’t see quick solutions. There are big problems that need more time to solve than we initially thought.