A climate of change · 2013. 7. 13. · July 13th 2013 SPECIAL REPORT THE ARAB SPRING A climate of...

July 13th 2013

S P E C I A L R E P O R T

T H E A R A B S P R I N G

A climateof change

20130713_SRArabSpring.indd 1 27/06/2013 15:25

ON FRIDAY AFTERNOONS two years ago, the picture on Arab televisionscreens developed a curious habit of multiplying. It would split in two,then three, then more and more lookalike frames. At the end of noonprayers, as mosques emptied in sequence across four time zones, newsteams in city after city beamed up dramatic imagery that was strikinglysimilar. The same vast, joyous, �ag-waving crowds surged into the PearlRoundabout in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, thronged the TahrirSquares of Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, and of Egypt’s great metropolis,Cairo, and swarmed the beachfront at Benghazi in Libya and the leafy av-enues of Tunis. Everyone was chanting the same refrain: �The people de-mand the fall of the regime.�

There were many such days in the spring of 2011, as if a hidden con-ductor had orchestrated a pan-Arab symphony of protest, and the upris-ing did bring momentous change. Before it began to stir in December2010, the world’s 350m Arabs had seemed oddly immune to the democ-racy bug that had infected most corners of the globe. Whether republicsor monarchies, nearly all of the world’s 19 predominantly Arabic-speak-ing states had solidi�ed into similar political forms, their varied constitu-tional veneers �imsy disguises for strongman rule. The people, includinglegions of often jobless youths, had no say in how things were run.

In breathtakingly short order the decades-old dictatorships of Tuni-sia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen collapsed. As popular pressure mounted,other Arab governments announced political reforms, more publicspending and other concessions to appease their restless people. A re-gion-wide burst of youthful energy that reminded Westerners of theirown liberating social upheaval of the 1960s suggested a new sense of em-

A climate of change

The spring proved �ckle, but Arabs are still yearning for it, says

Max Rodenbeck

1

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

CONTENT S

In addition to those cited in the

text, the author wishes to express

warm thanks to all who helped in

many and sundry ways, among them

Mohamed Ben Ahmed, Issandr El

Amrani, David Butter, Abu George,

Michael Hanna, Peter Harling, Emile

Hokayem, Haider Kata, Karima

Khalil, Tayseer al Khunaizi, Jane

Kininmont, Akram Ramadan, Lina

Sinjab, Prashant Rao, Oussama Safa

and Yezid Sayegh.

A list of sources is at

Economist.com/specialreports

An audio interview with

the author is at

Economist.com/audiovideo/specialreports

How many more to go?

Fertile Croissant

The power of religion

Give us a chance

The haves and the havenots

11 ConstitutionbuildingThe long march

15 After Egypt’s double springKeep going

SPECIAL REPORT

THE ARAB SPRING

The Economist July 13th 2013 1

3 Revolutionary potential

4 Historical borders

6 Political Islam

8 Youth

10 The economy

Source: The Economist

The rites of spring

Regime forcestogether with

Hizbullah seize townof Qusayr, Syria

President Ben Ali flees Tunisia

In Egypt demonstrators occupy Cairo’s Tahrir Square

Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak resigns, army takes control

Democracy protests start in Bahrain

Protests erupt in Libya, eastern half of country falls to rebels

Thousands protest peacefully in Morocco,King Mohammed VI promises new constitution soon

Uprising in Bahrain is suppressedwith help of Saudi troops

UN no-fly zone imposed over Libya,NATO bombardment begins

Government troops in Sana’a,Yemen’s capital, kill 45 protesters.Demonstrations persist

In Syria, 72 protesters killed whensecurity forces fire on crowds at Deraa

Muammar Qaddafi killed in Sirte, Libya.

War ends

Islamists win Egypt’s parliamentary election, having earlier polled strongly in Tunisia

President Ali Abdullah Saleh leaves Yemen

Regime beginsshelling Homs,Syria’s third-largest city,thousands ofSunnis flee

Muhammad Morsi ofthe Muslim Brotherhoodelected president of Egypt

Rebels launchoffensive to takeAleppo, Syria’slargest city

Protests begin in Tunisia, sparked by self-immolation of Muhammad Bouazizi

New mass protests in Egypt,leading to army taking control

and ousting President Morsi

2010 2011 2012 2013

J F M A M J J A S O N DJ F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J JD JJJ

1

powerment. The �Arab exception��the apparent inability ofthese neo-patriarchal states to move towards political normsshared by most of the world�seemed to have been overcome.

Those heady, hopeful days have long passed. The moodacross the Arab world now is gloomy. Some say sourly that theArab spring has turned into an Islamist winter. They fear thatafter losing power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and kin-dred groups with strong religious leanings that did well in theArab spring will may become even more combative. Many sus-pect that the Islamists have every intention of following the pathset by Iran’s revolution three decades ago, and that to such peo-ple democracy is merely a vehicle for legitimising a new form ofauthoritarianism: �One man, one vote, one time.�

Yet Arab Islamists also lament the way things have evolved.Now in power in many countries after decades in opposition,they are learning hard lessons. Translating religious ideals intopractical policies is tough when Islamists themselves are farfrom agreed over what those ideals should be, and tougher stillwhen resistance to Islamist aims, whether from entrenched bu-reaucracies or from secular-minded elites, proves sti� and unre-lenting. Even so, the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’sMuslim Brotherhood president, by a combination of popular re-jection and military muscle came as a shock.

Other critics worry less about the Islamists’ intentions orthe danger of political polarisation than about the messy, pro-longed political transitions now in progress, which so far havedone nothing to alleviate the social problems that spawned theupheavals in the �rst place. Nowhere, as yet, has the right to voteor greater freedom to speak translated into markedly better gov-ernment, more jobs or brighter short-term prospects. No Arabcountry has emerged as a model for others to follow. Despairseems to be winning over hope. Countries such as Tunisia andEgypt could remain turbulent for years to come, whoever is ingovernment there.

And those newly democratic countries have done relative-ly well. Elsewhere, the �rst �owerings of protest in the spring of2011 brought not freedom but more tyranny and vicious civil

2How much democracy?

Source: Freedom House, The Economist*Flawed election †Preparing to issue

new constitution ‡Part elected, part appointed

New Serious Monarchy/ Head constitution politicalCountry Republic of state Legislature issued violence

Algeria R ✔* ✔ ✔† ✘

Bahrain M ✘ ✔ ✘ ✔

Egypt R ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Iraq R ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔

Jordan M ✘ ✔/✘‡ ✘ ✘

Kuwait M ✘ ✔ ✘ ✘

Lebanon R ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘

Libya R ✔ ✔ ✔† ✔

Mauritania R ✘ ✔ ✘ ✘

Morocco M ✘ ✔ ✔ ✘

Oman M ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

Palestinian Territories R ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘

Qatar M ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

Saudi Arabia M ✘ ✘ ✘ ✘

Sudan R ✘ ✘ ✔† ✘

Syria R ✔* ✔ ✔ ✔

Tunisia R ✔ ✔ ✔† ✔

UAE M ✘ ✔/✘‡ ✘ ✘

Yemen R ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔

Since 2010Elected

strife. When the police in the tiny island kingdom of Bahrainfailed to stamp out a raucous pro-democracy mutiny, the rulingfamily panicked. It invited nearby Sunni monarchs to send introops, which lead to scores of deaths and hundreds of arrests.The result is a grim stand-o� between the country’s embitteredtwo-thirds majority of Shia Muslims and a wary Sunni minority.Not only has Bahrain failed to progress, it has turned the clockback to where it was after a previous bout of sectarian tensionsin the 1980s.

Even that outcome pales next to the carnage in Syria. Whathas unfolded is far beyond the worst imaginings of the protesterswho dared to challenge the government with peaceful marchestwo years ago. The death toll so far has now passed 100,000;more than a quarter of Syria’s 21m people have been displaced;half its main cities are in ruins; and, predicts the UN, half its pop-ulation will be in need of food aid by the end of this year. Whatbegan as an inclusive popular uprising has turned into a fratri-cidal war with no end in sight. The only conceivable scenariosfor the con�ict’s outcome are dismally bleak.

A victory for the regime of Bashar Assad would perpetuatea cruel dictatorship in a physically devastated, psychologically

2 The Economist July 13th 2013

THE ARAB SPRING

SPECIAL REPORT

22

1

2

1

84.7*

6.2

11.0

39.233.0

3.9

4.8

4.37.2

3.3

1.3

2.1

3.6

30.9*

28.8

24.4

9.1

33.8

22.0

L I B Y A

A L G E R I A

TUNISIA

E G Y P T

S U D A N

WESTERN

SAHARA(sovereignty

disputed)

MAURITANIA

MOROCCO

Re

d S

ea

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

S A U D IA R A B I A

Y E M E N

KUWAIT

LEBANON

IRAQ

O MA N

JORDAN

B

A

C

D

SYRIA

The Gulf

N i le

Benghazi

Tunis

Casablanca

Rabat

Nouakchott

Marrakech

Algiers

Tripoli

750 km

Riyadh

KhartoumSana’a

Muscat

Cairo

Above 50

GDP per person, 2012$’000 at PPP†

50-25

25-10

10-5

Below 5

No data

Sources: UN; Economist Intelligence Unit*Government figures

†Purchasing-power parity

Population, 2013Estimate, m

Total: 355.7

QATAR

BAHRAIN

PALESTINIANTERRITORIES

UNITEDARABEMIRATES

B:

C:

D:

A:

traumatised and politically isolated land. Victory for his foescould unleash horri�c sectarian vengeance against Syria’s multi-ple minorities by the long-oppressed and now enraged 70% Sun-ni majority. Should the current stalemate persist, the dissolutionof Syria into hostile enclaves could become permanent, leadingto strife as prolonged as the civil war that ravaged neighbouringLebanon for 15 years.

There could be worse to come. Syria’s agony has alreadyspilled across its borders, with nearly two million refugees nowsheltering in neighbouring countries. Trouble has moved theother way, too. The men, money and materiel �owing into Syriaare increasingly helping to turn this into a proxy war pitting MrAssad’s allies�Iran, Iraq, Russia and Hizbullah (the LebaneseShia group close to Iran)�against the Arab and Western coun-tries that back his enemies. These, ominously, include extreme ji-hadist factions, among them al-Qaeda, whose ambitions extendfar beyond imposing harsh religious laws. They seek to �cleanse�Syria and the region as a whole of anything they see as alien totheir narrow interpretation of Islam.

The widening of the strife underlines the fragility of Syria’sborders. These �lines in the sand�, drawn a century ago by domi-nant European powers with scant concern for sentiments on theground, may in future be redrawn in blood. Already, Kurdishgroups in Syria’s north-east have carved out something akin toan autonomous zone linked, albeit tenuously for now, to theKurdish part of neighbouring Iraq and Kurds in Turkey. Already,too, the increasingly open hostility between Syrian Sunnis andShias has rekindled sectarian passions in Iraq, Lebanon and asfar a�eld as Yemen, bringing closer the possibility of a directclash between the Shia superpower, Iran, and big Sunni statessuch as Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The 1,400-year-old great �tna(schism) between Islam’s main branches, given to periodic erup-tions, rumbles ominously again. In the words of an Arab saying,�Fitna sleeps; God’s curse upon him who wakens it.�

The end of the beginning

Syria’s tragedy, and to a lesser extent the problems causedby the transition elsewhere, have other perverse e�ects. Regimesthat have so far resisted reforms use them as excuses for stickingwith their old ways. The oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf, in par-ticular, have tightened restrictions on freedom of speech. Most oftheir citizens are comfortably o� and have yet to voice dissent onany scale, but unease stirs below the tranquil surface.

In short, the scorecard for the Arab spring so far looks over-whelmingly negative. But this special report will argue that suchan assessment is premature. Rather than having reached a sorry

end-point, the wave of change may have only just begun. Judg-ing by experience elsewhere, such transitions take not monthsbut years, even decades.

Further unrest and almost certainly further bloodshed liein store. But this may well be unavoidable in a part of the worldwhere bewildering social change, including extremely rapidpopulation growth and urbanisation, for so long went woefullyunmatched by any evolution in politics. Debate on such crucialissues as the relationship between state and religion, central au-thority and local demands, and individual and collective rightscould not be inde�nitely sti�ed. Something had to give. 7

SIX MONTHS BEFORE Egypt’s revolution in January 2011this paper suggested that the seemingly most placid of the

Arab countries was about to be shaken to its foundations. Evenafter three decades of stu�y sameness under the continuous ruleof Hosni Mubarak, that much seemed obvious. Egypt’s very pla-cidity made it easy to spot the converging factors that pointed toimpending collapse.

Predictions are far more hazardous in times of �ux such asnow, but European history may o�er some lessons. In 1848 thecitizens of Sicily rose up to rid their island of a hated tyrant. Hav-ing overpowered his troops, they proclaimed a constitution andelected a parliament. This was the �rst in a succession of upris-ings, some 50 in all, that rattled rulers across the continent. TheSicilian republic survived for only 16 months, and within twoyears all the other revolts were similarly crushed. Only in Den-mark did the revolutionaries achieve a measure of success: theking conceded demands for a constitutional monarchy.

Yet the embers of revolution smouldered on. Within a gen-eration of 1848 the whole of Europe had been radically trans-formed. Ethnic rather than dynastic boundaries de�ned new na-tions such as Germany and Italy. Slavery and serfdom wereabolished. Hereditary rule retreated before liberal democracy.

A century later, in May 1968, an eruption of youthful anger

Revolutionary potential

How many more to go?

Change now seems less out of reach


SPECIAL REPORTTHE ARAB SPRING

2

King Faisal of Iraq was deposed morebloodily in 1958. Imam Muhammad alBadr of Yemen was overthrown in 1962and King Idris of Libya in 1969.

By the 1970s this wave had prettymuch passed. The Arab political map set-tled into a varied patchwork of kingdoms,emirates, civilian dictatorships and army-ruled republics, some grindingly poorand others exceedingly rich, some aggres-sively secularist and others, such as SaudiArabia, conservative and puritanical.

Spot the similarities

Even so, those 19 Arab states hadmuch in common. Most had parliaments,but nearly all of these were the rubber-stamp kind. Power rested in the hands ofruling families or parties dominated bynarrow clans. The state, often bolsteredby oil income that ballooned in the 1973energy crisis, proposed and disposed atwill. Zealous ministries of propaganda,education and culture made sure the statewas respected. Brutal police and compli-ant courts made sure it was feared. Multi-ple security organisations that spied oneach other made sure it was coup-proof.

Such was the Arab norm for threedecades: states modelled on patriarchalfamilies that rewarded loyalty with hand-outs. Some rulers were benign and wellloved, others venal or cruel, but commonrituals and touchstones, such as memo-ries of anti-colonial struggles, served tosuggest a shared legitimacy. Every year atArab summit meetings, leaders gatheredto pay homage to Arab unity, Muslim sol-idarity and the sacred cause of Palestine.

This wider family was never a veryhappy one. The hundred-year-long strug-gle over Palestine has been one festeringsore. Yet in terms of casualties su�ered,the Arab-Israeli con�ict is far from theworst trauma that Arabs have had to en-dure. Civil wars in Sudan, Algeria, Leba-non and Iraq have each claimed manymore lives. Syria, with grim certainty,soon will. Egypt lost more soldiers whenit intervened in Yemen in the early 1960s,in support of republicans against Saudi-backed monarchists, than in the sands ofSinai during the six-day war against Israel

in 1967. The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s left vast numbers of peopledead, perhaps half a million, possibly over a million; no oneknows for sure.

Ironically, Palestinians have often been victims of internalArab squabbles. Jordan chased out many of them in the 1970s,Lebanon in the 1980s, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s andIraq after the American invasion in 2003. The Assad regime inSyria, which long proclaimed itself the chief champion of resis-tance to Israel, is busy hounding Palestinians even now. Tens ofthousands have �ed to neighbouring Lebanon, squeezing inamong their countrymen already crowded into squalid refugeecamps there because Lebanon will not let them own property.

DID WINSTON CHURCHILL hiccup or sneeze?Either way, the story goes, the pen in hishand slipped on the map, leaving Jordan’seastern border sharply indented. Like manylegends, this holds a kernel of truth. ManyArab frontiers re�ect not natural or humanboundaries but the whims and fears of theimperialists who drew them up.

As colonial secretary in 1921, Churchillmight have lopped o� more of Jordan, buthe wanted to keep control of an air corridorto another British protectorate, Iraq, wherethe Royal Air Force was dropping poison gason rebellious Arab tribes. In 1916, in themiddle of the �rst world war, Britain andFrance had signed a secret pact, the notori-ous Sykes-Picot agreement (named afterthe British and the French diplomats whonegotiated it), to split the Fertile Crescentbetween them. A northern slice, runningfrom the Mediterranean to the Tigris river,went to France; a southern slice, fromPalestine to Iraq, was bagged by Britain.Both had reason to be happy. The Catholicchurch had been nagging for French controlof the Syrian coast, home to many MaroniteCatholics, and Britain was keen to put theFrench between them and the Russians tothe north.

Their carve-up of the Ottoman empiremight have been worse. Unsure at �rst whatto do with Palestine, they considered givingit to Belgium. Instead, Arthur Balfour,Britain’s foreign secretary, in 1917 issued adeclaration promising a �national home forthe Jewish people� in Palestine. Like Chur-chill and Sykes, Balfour quietly favouredsteering Jews away from British shores.Wartime British o�cials also sought toplease in�uential Zionists in America, aswell as Russian Bolsheviks.

France did slice Lebanon out of Syria,aiming to create a Christian-dominatedrepublic, and in the 1920s brie�y considered

giving a coastal state to the Alawites and aninland one to the Druze. France and Britainalso backed the formation of a Kurdish stateat the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, but theyrefused to allow �their� Kurds in Iraq andSyria to join it. The idea �zzled, leavingtoday’s 25m Kurds as the globe’s largestpeople without a state. But in 1938 Francedonated a chunk of Syria, now known asHatay, to Turkey. Hatay’s Turkish minorityhad been lobbying more e�ectively than therest of the population, mostly Arabic-speaking, who wanted to remain in Syria.

Now, with Syria again fracturing intowarring parts, Iraq threatening to followsuit and cracks beginning to show in Leba-non, the borders drawn up nearly a centuryago are starting to look frayed. Syria’sdispersed Kurds are now meeting as refu-gees in the Kurdish autonomous zone innorthern Iraq. The closely related SunniArab tribes of the Euphrates valley, sliced intwo by Messrs Sykes and Picot, are unitingagain, this time to face Shia oppressors.And to the west, perhaps, that stillbornAlawite state is about to rise again.

Fertile Croissant

Old divisions are being re-examined

in Paris launched a wave of popular protest. In the end nothingvery big happened immediately afterwards, aside from the ar-rival of Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia and the widespreadadoption of blue jeans, rock music and notions of personal free-dom. Yet in subsequent years dictatorships toppled, �rst acrosssouthern Europe in the 1970s, then in South America in the 1980sand �nally across the crumbling Soviet empire later that decade.

Arabs, too, have lived through waves of change before. Theprevious one started in March 1949 when a group of army o�-cers staged a coup against the elected president of Syria, ShukriKouatly, a hero in the struggle for independence from France.Three years later Egyptian soldiers shunted King Farouk aside.

Mutayrat

S inj ar

Sham

mar

Riba

t

Ju

bb

ur i

Du r i

D u l a y m

Gh

al a

l

Zubaydi

U n i z a h

D u f i r

Ubayd

Muntafiq

S Y R I A

I R A N

S A U D I A R A B I A

T U R K E Y

AZ.

JORDAN

ISRAEL

LEBANON

I R A Q

Tigris

Euphra t e s Baghdad

Damascus

Aleppo

Samarra

Amman

Beirut

Hatay

Predominant religion:

Significant populations of:

Areas of highKurdish population

Sunni Shia Other

Sparsely populated/uninhabited

Sources:Columbia University;

The Economist

Ismaili ChristianDruzeAlawites

250 km


THE ARAB SPRING

SPECIAL REPORT

1

The importance of Arab rulers’ failure to honour promisesover Palestine should not be exaggerated. Three-quarters of Arabcountries share no border with the troublesome Jewish state. Yetthat failure is symptomatic of a much wider shortcoming. Sim-ply put, Arab regimes have failed to live up to the unspoken bar-gains meant to underpin their rule.

This was not always true. Until the mid-1980s most Arabcountries’ economies performed as well as the rest of the world.Living standards rose dramatically. Life expectancy and literacysoared. Limits to freedom seemed a price worth paying for build-ing nations within borders that were mostly legacies of Euro-pean imperial rule (see box, previous page).

A bargain built on oil

Yet this success rested on shaky foundations. Windfall oilrevenues in the 1970s encouraged Arab oil exporters to indulgetheir people with mammoth infrastructure projects and cradle-to-grave welfare bene�ts. When the oil price su�ered a pro-longed slump, their economies stalled. Youths in countries suchas Saudi Arabia and Algeria were shocked by the prospect ofending up poorer than their parents and being unable to set uphomes of their own. Youth riots in Algeria in 1988, a precursor tothe civil war starting in 1992, were a premonition of troubles else-where. So was a wave of youthful Islamist activism in Saudi Ara-bia in the 1990s, the crushing of which caused some to embracethe radical jihadism preached by an exiled Saudi millionaire,Osama bin Laden.

Poorer Arab countries fared no better. Most Arab republicshad embraced central planning, state capitalism and import sub-stitution. By the 1980s their ine�cient industries and scleroticbureaucracies were creaking. The managerial classes in placessuch as Egypt and Syria, perfunctorily educated in the factory-like schools built to accommodate rapidly expanding cohorts ofchildren, fell ever further behind their peers elsewhere.

By the start of the 21st century the proportion of Arab work-

ers employed by the state was close to double the world average,and far higher still in oil-rich countries. Even so, Arab youth un-employment was twice the world average. Governments strug-gled to sustain blanket subsidies on food and energy, legacies ofpaternalism which their secret police advised them should notbe touched for fear of sparking riots.

In response, rulers who had hitherto shunned business-friendly policies hastily adopted them. This was easier for theenergy-rich because oil prices conveniently rose. For the rest thesudden shift to neo-liberalism brought gains, too, in the shape offaster growth rates and big investment in�ows. But new wealthaccrued disproportionately to those with links to ruling clans.The swaggering families of the rulers and their cronies baggedprime concessions. The old bargain with the people was increas-ingly ignored.

More importantly, those people had changed. By 2010 near-ly two-thirds of Arabs were living in cities. Among those under30, three-quarters were literate and increasingly connected to theworld via satellite television and the internet. Yet around 40% ofthe Arab population were still subsisting on less than $2.75 a day,spending more than half their income on food. This was an ex-plosive mix, and the fuse to set it o� had already been lit.

In September 2000 a group of 99 intellectuals in Damas-cus, the Syrian capital, presented a petition to their country’snew president. It was a time of hope. The dictator for the previ-ous three decades, Hafez Assad, had died. His son and heir,Bashar, projected a gentler image. The petitioners humbly askedfor an end to the emergency laws in force since 1963, a pardon forpolitical dissidents and rights of free assembly and speech.

At �rst Mr Assad appeared to listen. He released politicalprisoners and invited exiles to return. But the Damascus springquickly clouded over. Within a few years nearly all the signato-ries to the petition were in prison or exile. Like other Arab leadersat the time who faced similar pressures, Mr Assad judged that thegroup of activists was small and had limited support among thewider population.

He was right to assume that ordinary people were wary oftroublemakers, but failed to notice that the activists’ ideas andthe example of their sacri�ce were making an impact. Arab re-gimes in general were also slow to become aware of the spreadof new methods of dissent. Some of these were inspired by Pal-estinian uprisings against Israeli occupation. Events in Lebanon,which ironically may have been instigated by Mr Assad himself,also provided an example. After a car bombing in 2005 that

killed a popular politician, Ra�k Hariri, aquarter of Lebanon’s 4m people sponta-neously poured onto the streets to holdvast peaceful demonstrations. Many ofthem blamed the murder on Syria, whichhad long meddled in its neighbour’s af-fairs. The uprising forced Lebanon’s pro-Syrian government to resign and pushedout Syrian �peacekeeping� troops leftover from Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war.

The increasingly restless popula-tions across the Arab world just needed afew sparks of their own to set them o�,

and these were not long in coming. Whenthey started to �y in Tunisia in late 2010,satellite TV, the internet and mobilephones with cameras were on hand tomagnify the con�agration�rather as, backin 1848, the new telegraph, railways anddaily newspapers with their illustratedsupplements had multiplied the impact of

the uprisings across Europe. The Arab revolutions have so far toppled �ve governments

(two of them in Egypt), shaken two more to the bone and badlyrattled most others. Even quiescent, prosperous Kuwait andOman have seen mass demonstrations in support of reform. Forthe moment, however, the wave mostly seems to have run out ofmomentum. Some governments have managed to deal with thediscontent by peaceful means. Muhammad VI, the king of Mo-rocco, nipped protests in the bud at the height of the Arab springin 2011 by adopting a new constitution that limits some of hispowers, and by appointing a mildly Islamist prime minister.

The rulers of Algeria, Sudan, Iraq and Jordan have all re-sorted to tried-and-true methods of co-option and intimidation,which so far seem to have worked. In the �rst three cases, recentexperience of grisly civil wars at home has spoilt the public’s ap-petite for con�ict. Jordanians, for their part, have been front-rowspectators to tragedies in neighbouring countries. Swampedwith refugees from both Iraq and Syria, they are keenly awarethat however impatient for change, their own people remaindangerously split between native East Bankers and a majoritydescended from Palestinian refugees, as well as between Islam-ists and secular critics.

The Arab revolutions have so far toppled �vegovernments (two of them in Egypt), shaken two moreto the bone and badly rattled most others



2

1

The hereditary rulers of the Gulf stand out as di�erent.Their small populations and immense and still growing wealthmean they can �buy a holiday from politics�, in the words of Hi-lal Khashan, a political scientist at the American University ofBeirut. Saudi Arabia announced a $120 billion increase in socialspending in March 2011. The extra funds for housing subsidies,scholarships, pensions and temporary unemployment bene�twere a stopgap measure, but nonetheless welcome for that in acountry where, shockingly, a quarter of all families fall below thenational poverty line.

None of the six member states of the Gulf Co-operationCouncil has made any serious move towards political reform ordemocracy. Instead they have all cracked down more heavily ondissent, jailing critics, constraining media and introducing toughnew laws on public gatherings. Their ministries of informationwork hard to present the changes in Egypt and Tunisia as disas-trous and to depict Syria as an apocalypse.

Yet if history is any guide, waves like the Arab spring can-not be turned back. Paul Salem, the director of Beirut’s CarnegieCentre, a think-tank, believes the region has already undergone aparadigm shift. �A massive transformation in political con-sciousness has been seared into minds with sacri�ce and hero-ism,� he says. �No one now doubts that what the Arab publicwants is elected, constitutional government.� In the past twoyears some 124m Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis and Libyanshave reached for that aim. If you include Iraq, with 33.8m people,which held proper elections in 2005, nearly half of all Arabshave accepted that only democracy can bestow legitimacy. 7

ON A SUNDAY in early June Muhammad Qatta, a roadsideco�ee-seller in the Syrian city of Aleppo, refused to serve a

would-be freeloader. Even the prophet himself would have topay, he said. Some bearded rebel �ghters overheard him. Cryingblasphemy, they shot him dead. Muhammad was 15 years old.

On the same day, across the Lebanese border in Beirut, 28-year-old Hashem Salman also met his maker. He had joined avigil outside the Iranian embassy to protest against Iran’s sup-port for the Syrian regime. Burly men wearing yellow armbandsattacked the small crowd with clubs and pistols. Yellow is the col-our of Hizbullah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese party-cum-mili-tia that has lately also entered the fray in Syria. Mr Salman tooktwo bullets in his legs and one in the back.

These killings barely nudged the daily toll from Syria’s civilwar, a war that has warped into bloody attrition between themajority Sunni and better-armed Shia Muslims. Yet they gener-ated unusual outrage. Neither victim had played a role in Syria’s�ghting. One was a Sunni, the other Shia. Both were killed notjust by members of their own sects but by groups posing as theirmost zealous guardians. The killers in both cases saw them-selves as punishing traitors to the faith.

Islam, like any great religion, is a broad tent. Within it, Is-lamism�the belief that politics is and must be an extension ofthe faith�comes in many colours, from the black of al-Qaeda tothe dark green of Saudi-style Wahhabism to the palest of moder-

nising shades. In whatever dose, the mixing of religion with poli-tics implicitly involves the right to interpret and to impose thewill of God. Many Arabs, and not just the avowedly secular, areuncomfortable with this and resent such powers of enforce-ment. Perhaps that is why, amid the seemingly inexorable rise ofIslam as a political rallying force and amid increasingly stridentassertions of sectarian identity, doubts are also growing.

The people’s choice

This may seem an odd claim. Since the 1990s Islamist par-ties have captured majorities pretty much wherever Arabs haveheld free elections, and have done even better since the Arabspring. In Egypt the long-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and itsallies, including puritanical Sala�sts, grabbed two-thirds of theseats in the �rst general election after the uprising. The Brother-hood’s candidate, Muhammad Morsi, went on to clinch the pres-idency. Libyan and Yemeni voters have also strongly backed Is-lamists, though both countries are politically too fragmented forany one party to dominate. Even Tunisians, despite a long secu-lar tradition, gave far more votes to the country’s main Islamistparty, Nahda, than to any other.

It is mainstream Islamists rather than radicals who havewon the most votes: men with trimmed beards and ties; womenwearing headscarves rather than burqas. These newly empow-ered movements have generally shied away from imposingharsher religious rules. They sense that apart from a committedminority, voters care more about cleaning up government thanbringing society closer to God. Yet as Islamists search for ways toshow that they are putting faith into politics, it is not surprisingthat the tone of their sectarian rhetoric has risen.

This is something new. The Sunni-Shia schism may havelasted for 14 centuries, but most of that time it has lain dormant.Sectarianism has rarely been much of an issue for the bulk of Ar-abs, who live in countries that are overwhelmingly Sunni. Inplaces that are more mixed, intermarriage has been common inmodern times. For many years the Muslim Brotherhood contem-plated a grand alliance with Shia Iran, and most Islamists stillharbour lingering dreams of a united Muslim umma (nation).But more recently a combination of factors has pushed the twosects apart, ranging from a waning sense of a shared struggleagainst the West to the oil-greased rise in the in�uence of SunniSaudi Arabia (whose Wahhabist state ideology vili�es Shias asheretics) and the empowerment of historically marginalisedShias in other countries.

This split has widened dramatically in recent years, begin-ning in Iraq. The fall in 2003 of the country’s brutal despot, Sad-dam Hussein, gave vent to the burning resentment of the Shiaunderclass he had long persecuted, raising fears among Sunniswho had ruled the territory since Ottoman times. The Americanoccupiers did not help. Sweeping purges of former regime mem-bers hurt Sunnis disproportionately. New o�ce-holders weretypically chosen by party quota, which favoured the better-organised Shias.

Islamists in both camps championed armed resistance tothe occupiers, but the arrival on the scene of al-Qaeda, which es-pouses Wahhabist views, promoted not joint e�orts but murder-ous competition. The Sunni terrorists’ demolition of the golden-domed Shia shrine at Samarra in 2006 set o� a vicious round ofsectarian �cleansing� that left tens of thousands dead. Iraq’sonce-cosmopolitan capital, Baghdad, became a checkerboard ofsectarian ghettoes. The country remains divided, the disgrun-tled, impoverished and violent Sunni part now contrasting witha relatively quiet and prospering Kurdish north and Shia south.

America’s intervention had wider e�ects. It pushed Iran’srulers to accelerate their nuclear project. To deter Israel from

Political Islam

The power of religion

For Islamists, government is proving harder than

opposition


THE ARAB SPRING

SPECIAL REPORT

2

1

striking to preserve its regional nuclear monopoly, the Shiasuperpower also ramped up its long-standing sponsorship ofHizbullah. The Lebanese Shia party-cum-militia �exed its grow-ing muscle in a short but nasty war with Israel in 2006. Two yearslater its militiamen invaded Sunni quarters of Beirut and im-posed a government more to its liking. This has dangerouslytipped Lebanon’s delicate sectarian balance of about one-thirdShia, one-third Sunni and one-third others, mainly Christian.

Syria radicalised

The religious mosaic in neighbouring Syria is equally intri-cate, but its cracks had long seemed better sealed. Many bore agrudge against the 12% minority of Alawites, an esoteric o�shootof Shiism to which the ruling Assad clan and much of the o�cerclass belong. Yet that was incidental to the uprising starting inMarch 2011, which was mainly about freedom.

Mr Assad’s regime worked hard not just to crush the revoltbut to turn it into a sectarian battle. His soldiers, unlike those inEgypt and Tunisia, were prepared to riddle unarmed crowdswith gun�re. Stunned at �rst, protesters soon started shootingback with whatever came to hand, validating Mr Assad’s claimto be battling not a popular revolt but an armed insurgency.

Mysterious attacks against Christians and other minoritiesfollowed, prompting some to form pro-government vigilantegangs. The regime singled out Sunnis for punishment, sendingpacks of thugs to slaughter villagers, blasting Sunni districts withartillery and arresting and torturing thousands. As abandonedSunni homes were systematically plundered, the country’s new-ly �ourishing �ea markets took on a new name, souk al sunna.

Until then, Syrian Sunnis had rarely de�ned themselves insectarian terms. After all, they made up nearly two-thirds of thepopulation. To their minds, class and regional di�erences weremore important. But Mr Assad’s ferocious repression forcedthem�and especially the poorer ones, who su�ered most�to re-

think. By the second year of the uprising the idealistic instigatorsof Syria’s revolution had increasingly retreated, leaving an en-raged, radicalised Sunni-dominated core. It was the zealots andextremists, fuelled by global jihadist networks, who gained areputation for �ghting hardest and most e�ectively.

A self-ful�lling prophet, Mr Assad now poses as the de-fender of Syria’s pluralist urban middle class against a fanatical,impoverished and foreign-sponsored Sunni horde. Radical jiha-dist groups can be counted on to burnish his image by commit-ting atrocious acts of vengeance.

But there was nothing inevitable about Syria’s march intosectarian swamps, and the same is true in other Arab countries.The Sunni rulers of Bahrain, for instance, played out Mr Assad’srole in reverse, albeit less brutally. They depicted the (mostlyShia) marchers who demanded constitutional democracy inFebruary 2011as an Iranian �fth column. This succeeded in shift-ing the issue from local demands for reform to a perceived broad-er threat against all the Gulf’s Sunni rulers. Two years later, industy Shia villages just minutes from the sleek waterfront ofBahrain’s capital, Manama, black religious banners and sten-cilled images of martyrs proclaim sullen resistance.

Scholars see the return of sectarianism less as a revival ofIslam’s 1,400-year-old schism than as an outcome of failing mod-ern states. Gregory Gause, a political scientist at the University ofVermont, notes in a recent paper that sectarian identity is stron-gest in countries with weak central governments, such as Leba-non. The abrupt implosion of Iraq and Syria, which had beenhighly centralised and repressive states, helps explain their rapiddescent into mayhem. An increase in sporadic attacks againstEgypt’s 10% Christian minority may also indicate a decline in thestate’s capacity to mediate social relations.

In most cases, sectarian nastiness has been less a product ofreligious dogma than of contests for power or resources. �Moreoften than not, the intricacies of faith and theology are about as

relevant in Iraqi sectarian dynamics asChristianity is in the rhetoric of Europeanfar-right groups,� writes Fanar Haddad,an Iraqi scholar at the National Universi-ty of Singapore. �It is religion as identityrather than religion as faith that is beingmobilised.� Yet Mr Haddad cautions thatthis may be changing. Scriptural argu-ments for sectarianism are no longer thepreserve of crusty sheikhs from Qasim,the Wahhabist heartland of Saudi Arabia.Hizbullah’s recent dispatch of �ghtersinto Syria has provoked a torrent of Sunniabuse. Mosque sermons recalled distanthistorical episodes of supposed Shia per-�dy. Yusuf Qaradawi, a popular televi-sion preacher who speaks for the MuslimBrotherhood, said he regretted his past ef-forts at reconciliation with Shias. Heblasted Hizbullah as the party of Satanand called for jihad.

This increasingly ugly tone bodes illfor sectarian relations across Islam. Theunderlying geopolitical struggle betweenIran and Saudi Arabia, re�ected by proxyin Iraq and Syria, may yet come to a dan-gerous head. But there are grounds forhope, too.

The most important one is that, inthe more peaceful political climate ofcountries such as Tunisia and Egypt, Ar-Both sides in Syria pray for victory



2

1

1

abs have, for the �rst time, subjected Islamists to practical tests ofgovernment. During decades of persecution under dictatorial re-gimes, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed the luxuryof being in perpetual opposition. They could criticise withouthaving to o�er policy alternatives beyond the Brothers’ slogan,�Islam is the solution.� As they have now found, running theplace is a lot more di�cult than carping from the sidelines.

This test has been conducted most visibly in Egypt, wheredespite its initial electoral success the Brotherhood struggled tosecure longer-term gains. Its troubles were partly of its own mak-ing. The Brothers have long believed that they represent Egypt’strue silent majority. In contrast to what they see as a corrupt andslavishly Westernised elite, the Islamists present themselves asthe embodiment of native cultural authenticity, with high moralstandards. Their tight internal organisation gave an impressionof quiet competence that proved highly successful at the polls.Many hoped that this would translate into e�ective government.

Easy to say, hard to do

Those hopes have been dashed. In the words of an interna-tional consultant who advises regional governments, the Broth-ers turned out to be �high on will, low on skill�. Mr Morsi put farmore e�ort into trying to consolidate his own control than intodealing with Egypt’s dire economic and social problems. His ap-pointments plainly showed a preference for piety over compe-tence. A new constitution, which Mr Morsi forced through lastDecember against strenuous objections from non-Islamists andlegal experts, proved riddled with �aws.

In power, Egypt’s Islamists took on many of the characteris-tics of the ruling party that kept them out for so long. Mr Morsihas shielded the army and police from scrutiny of repressive tac-tics that left perhaps a thousand Egyptians dead in repeatedbouts of unrest. Under his watch courts freed dozens of formerregime o�cials accused of abusing power. At the same time theyprosecuted young revolutionaries, including on such charges as�insulting the head of state�. The Brotherhood’s haughty moralattitude and its instinctive secrecy limited its ability to reach outto political opponents. Instead, Mr Morsi’s government tried toco-opt or subvert his foes, using state-controlled media, state-subsidised goods and tactics such as holding televised �dia-logues� that excluded authoritative opposition �gures.

All this took a steep toll on the Brothers’ standing with theEgyptian public, which has turned out to be far more sophisticat-ed, complex and �ckle than they had assumed. Following theirconvincing win in parliamentary elections at the end of 2011, tenmonths after Egypt’s revolution, they fared progressively worseat the polls. Mr Morsi won the presidency by a whisker in June2012, but after peaking at 80% in September last year, by lastmonth his popularity had plunged to 30%, according to polls.Even before the latest mass uprising, described by one commen-tator as a �popular impeachment�, and the army coup, the Mus-lim Brothers had been heavily defeated in elections for universi-ty student councils and professional syndicates, bodies they hadlong dominated.

Egypt’s myriad bickering secular parties are not well placedto pro�t from the Brothers’ demise. If national elections are heldin the near future, the biggest gainers might be the Brotherhood’sIslamist rivals, the puritan Sala�sts. Yet it has become increasing-ly clear that the appeal of the Islamists stems not so much fromtheir religious standing or their promises to impose sharia law asfrom their superior ability to harness the resentments of Egypt’spoor. With problems proliferating, from surging unemploymentto crippling power and fuel shortages, it was perhaps not surpris-ing that a large section of this vast underclass took to the streetsfor a second time. 7

THE NUMBER OF Arabs in the world has tripled since 1970,to about 350m. And although in recent years population

growth has slowed in most Arab countries, as it has in most ofthe world, demographers think the total is still likely to reach600m by 2050.

On maps the Arab world still looks largely empty, andsome of the constituent countries certainly are. In Libya andMauritania the population density is just three people persquare kilometre. In Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, apatch of sand the size of Britain, it is below two. But the varietyacross the region is immense. Lebanon is more crowded thanBelgium, for instance, and the Gaza Strip is far more closelypacked than the city of Los Angeles. So are parts of Egypt, since80m of its 85m people are crammed into the narrow Nile valley.

These statistics matter. They show the immensity of the de-velopment task that Arab countries face. Yemen, for instance, isnot only one of the world’s poorest countries, with frighteningrates of child malnutrition; its renewable water resources perperson are less than a tenth of the global threshold for waterscarcity. Egypt has experienced a surge in poverty and childhoodstunting, a result of poor nutrition.

So far Arab countries have generally done a creditable job,at least in some �elds. Life expectancy in the region has risen by25 years since 1960, faster than in most parts of the world. Litera-cy in Saudi Arabia has shot up from 10% in 1960 to 87%, and 99%for youths of school-leaving age. Quantity, however, has notbeen matched by quality. Saudi Arabia spends a higher propor-tion of its GDP on schooling than most rich nations, yet in a re-cent set of standardised global maths tests, the Trends in Interna-tional Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), under half ofSaudi 13-year-olds reached the lowest benchmark, compared

Youth

Give us a chance

Lots of young people and few decent jobs are a recipe

for trouble

3Far too many idle handsBy educational level, 2005-10, youth aged 15-24, %

Source: World Bank *Not in education, employment or training

NEET* rates Unemployment rates

Primary Secondary Tertiary

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Iraq

West Bank& Gaza

Jordan

Egypt

Morocco

Yemen

Tunisia

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Tunisia

West Bank& Gaza

Morocco

Jordan

Egypt

Iraq

Yemen


THE ARAB SPRING

SPECIAL REPORT

2

with 99% in South Korea and 88% in Eng-land. Barely 1% of the Saudi childrengained an �advanced� level, against 47%of South Korean and 8% of English ones.

This suggests that Saudi schools arenot just of generally poor quality, but thatthey fail to encourage brighter students.The religion-heavy Saudi curriculummay be a distraction from maths. Still, thekingdom is not the only underachiever. Inthe TIMSS tests Arab countries made upnine of the bottom ten out of 63 partici-pating countries. Qatar, with one of theworld’s highest GDPs per person, scoredlower than impoverished Albania inreading, science and maths in the OECD’sPISA study in 2009.

These surveys showed up anotheranomaly. Almost everywhere else boysand girls did more or less equally well, butin Arab countries girls outperformedtheir pampered male siblings by hugemargins, and most Arab countries havemore female than male university stu-dents. Yet Arab countries also have ex-tremely low female labour-force partici-pation rates. For example, barely 15% of Algerian women of allages have paid jobs, compared with 58% in America. And the ra-tio of women to men in low-quality jobs in Arab countries re-mains the highest in the world, according to the International La-bour Organisation (ILO).

Partly because of women’s under-representation in theworkforce, youth unemployment in Arab countries is doublethe global average. In a recent report the World Bank points to aneven more telling measure: the proportion of people aged 15-24who are �not in education, employment or training� (NEET), ie,not even trying for a job. In Iraq, for instance, o�cial joblessnessfor youths with only primary education is 18%, but the NEET ratiois a shocking 57%. The rate for youths with university degrees ishigher still (see chart 3, previous page). Mustafa Tamimi, a politi-cal-science student at Baghdad’s Mustansiriya university, dis-misses the institution as �a factory of unemployment�.

The troubles su�ered by Muhammad Bouazizi, the unli-censed Tunisian pushcart entrepreneur whose self-immolationsparked o� the Arab spring, are still faced by millions every day.But few people noticed when in May this year a despairing vege-table seller in Riyadh, Muhammad Harissi, doused himself inpetrol and struck a match after the police had con�scated hisgoods. Tel Quel, a Moroccan weekly, reports that over the pasttwo years 80 Moroccan youths have done the same.

A kingdom for a house

What drives such people to extremes is not simply the di�-culty of scraping a living and being harassed by the law but theseemingly inescapable bind they �nd themselves in. Arab socialconventions remain rigid. Marriage is a prerequisite for sex, andhaving a house or �at is a prerequisite for marriage. To be unableto a�ord one is to remain in a state of dependency. Bad state plan-ning, poor access to �nance, tangled property laws and rapidpopulation growth all ensure that in most Arab countries de-mand for a�ordable housing far outstrips supply.

The average age of marriage in Arab countries has risen in-exorably in recent decades, suggesting that youths are beingforced to postpone setting up home. �I think one of the main in-dicators of what was behind the revolutions is the question,

how long would you have to work to get a house compared withyour parents?� says Kito de Boer, who runs the Dubai o�ce ofMcKinsey, a consultancy. The answer for nearly everywhere inthe Arab world is, a lot longer.

Arab governments have at last woken up to the scale of theproblem. Youth unemployment has become the theme of themoment at regional business forums, too. Numerous private andpublic initiatives have been launched to channel funds intotraining programmes, micro�nance and business incubators. Yetthe proportion of Arab �rms o�ering training is the lowest in theworld, says the ILO.

It is not surprising that across the region young people areincreasingly taking matters into their own hands, and not just bymarching for revolution. They are much more dynamic thantheir parents’ generation, which waited patiently for govern-ment jobs or favours from relatives. They are starting their ownbusinesses, in de�ance of a strong Arab cultural taboo againstfailure, and joining a plethora of new volunteer groups. Andrather as young people in the West did in the 1960s, they arebreaking the strictures of patriarchy in new ways. The musicaland artistic scene buzzes as never before, not only in cosmopol-itan settings such as Beirut, Cairo and Casablanca but in provin-cial towns, too. Young Saudis, bypassing the kingdom’s strictureson public entertainment with the aid of new technology, havetaken to producing comic videos, musical performances and se-rious theatre in their homes and beaming them into the ether. Asubculture of irreverence forms an increasingly strong counter-point to the apparent dominance of public piety.

One illustration is the immense popularity across the re-gion of Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian comic and talk-show host.Week after week he nimbly skewers victims such as the MuslimBrotherhood and pompous television presenters. His newspa-per columns have boldly tackled taboo subjects such as atheism.Wielding scripture to question the commonly held view thatapostasy from Islam should be punished by death, Mr Youssefrecently pointed out that the Koran suggests no such thing. An Is-lam that has to intimidate its followers, he concluded, is not theIslam he believes in. And Muslims that have to be so coerced arenot the kind of Muslims that Islam needs. 7

Displeasing prospects



2

4Black gold

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit *2010

2012, $bn

20

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

260

280

300

320

340

360

380

400

420

440

460

480

500

520

540

560

580

600

620

640

660

+

–

Current-account balance International reserves

Palestinian

Territories

Jordan

Tunisia

Mauritania

SyriaYem

en

Sudan

Morocco

Lebanon

LibyaSaudi Arabia

UAEAlgeria

QatarKuwait

Bahrain

Egypt

IraqOm

an

*na

THE SWEET PERFUME wafting over northern Iraq does notcome from the wild�owers that speckle its rumpled plains

in spring. It is the smell of oil and it is everywhere, �aring at well-heads, sloshing from the tanker trucks that grind up potholedroads to backyard re�neries in the Kurdish hills and fuming fromtheir chimneys. Nor is this the oiliest part of Iraq. That lies in thedeserts to the south where it literally seeps from the ground. Infact the whole of Iraq sits atop seams and pockets of the stickystu�. There is plenty to go around, if only the Iraqis could agree tostop shooting each other.

There is plenty for other Arabs, too. Taken together, their 19countries hold some 46% of the world’s total proven oil reserves(as well as a quarter of its natural-gas reserves). The ones withthe most have it doubly easy. Saudis or Kuwaitis spend just $3 totap a barrel from their most accessible wells. Small wonder thattheir oilmen sco� at looming competition from America’s fancyfrackers and shalers. The technical wizardry of the modern drill-ing techniques that may soon make America self-su�cient inenergy can push the cost of extracting a barrel well beyond $100.

The Arab world’s hydrocarbon riches are unevenly shared.Saudi Arabia alone holds the bulk of all reserves. Just eight Arabcountries have actually grown rich from energy exports, thoughsome of them spectacularly so: in the tiny emirate of Qatar some14% of households are dollar millionaires, a higher proportionthan in any other country. Divided among its 250,000 citizens(the other 85% of Qatar’s population of 2.1m are foreign workers),the tiny emirate’s GDP comes to $700,000 per person. Averageincomes across the Arab Gulf states are around 50 times those inYemen, Sudan and Mauritania.

This may change. Poorer Arab states are not about to be-come new Qatars, but many, such as Yemen, Tunisia, Sudan andEgypt, already export oil or gas, and the lingering energy paupersare doing better too. Morocco, until now completely reliant onimports, pins high hopes on o�shore exploration that is just get-ting under way. Its Atlantic shelf shares the same promising geol-ogy that oil companies in Mauritania are already exploiting.Much of this potential lode skirts the long coast of the WesternSahara, where sovereignty remains contested despite four de-cades of de facto Moroccan control. But there may be plenty inundisputed waters, too.

A wobbly balance

Huge gas�elds in the eastern Mediterranean also sprawlacross maritime borders. Egypt has been tapping its patch foryears, with Israel following more recently. Lebanon has untan-gled itself from internal bickering. Some day Gaza should have ashare of the crowded territory’s only resource aside from people.Perhaps in the future the other part of Palestine, the West Bank,will also pro�t from the small deposits of crude oil that Israeli�rms have found under its hills. Even Jordan may at last be ableto stop begging its neighbours for fuel. If oil prices hold steadyabove the $100 mark around which they have �uctuated in re-cent years, the shale oil that sits under 60% of Jordan’s surfacewill become commercially viable.

That is a big if. In 1999 this newspaper speculated that oil

prices might collapse to $5 a barrel. Instead they soared, peakingin 2008 at $145. The world’s current mix of political instability inoil-producing zones and surging demand from Asia leads someto think that despite expanding oil production worldwide, awobbly balance between supply and demand might be main-tained. But experience suggests that high prices sustained overlong periods encourage massive investment in exploration andimproved yields from existing infrastructure.

That is what happened in the 1970s, when high pricesspurred energy conservation and made it cost-e�ective to pro-duce in places like Alaska and the North Sea. The resulting oil-price collapse in the 1980s lasted a long time, despite rising Asiandemand and supply shocks such as the eight-year war betweentwo of the biggest exporters, Iran and Iraq. Arab producers werebadly hit. GDP per person in Saudi Arabia and Libya shrank by athird and took 20 years to regain its 1981 level.

A similar price fall today might not seem as threatening tothe bigger Arab producers. Over the past decade they haveracked up surpluses approaching the size of the combined GDP

of all 19 Arab states, $2.9 trillion. About half of that is sitting insovereign-wealth funds or foreign-currency reserves. But manygovernments, wary of unrest, have also raised state spending topotentially unsustainable levels. The so-called �scal break-evenpoint (the oil price needed to balance exporters’ budgets) is cur-rently over $80 for Saudi Arabia and $110 for Algeria, which relieson energy exports for 70% of its government revenue.

Both governments could simply cut spending, though thatinvolves political risks. They could also try something else: raiselocal energy prices. Throughout the region, the combination ofbig resources and patriarchal politics has made a hash of eco-nomics. The Arab hydrocarbons industry as a whole generatesabout $750 billion a year, but nearly a third of that, $240 billionby the IMF’s estimate, is frittered away on energy subsidies forArab consumers.

In Saudi Arabia, for instance, petrol costs under $0.20 a litre.Local consumption already eats up a quarter of Saudi oil output,and on current trends could devour all of it within 25 years. Do-mestic oil consumption across the Arab world last year rose by5.2%, the highest rate in any region. In the Gulf states it has beengrowing at an annual 6% since 1980.

Rich countries can a�ord this, though not inde�nitely. For

The economy

The haves and thehavenotsBut even rich Arab countries cannot squander their

resources inde�nitely


THE ARAB SPRING

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poor countries the subsidies have become ruinous. Yemen’s gov-ernment, for instance, spends the equivalent of 6% of its GDP onkeeping fuel prices low, more than on health and education com-bined. Most of this goes on diesel, which feeds the water pumpsthat irrigate the country’s most important crop, qat, a pleasantlynarcotic shrub that keeps millions quiet.

The cost to Egypt is just as heavy. The government’s subsidybill is $18 billion, again far higher than its spending on publicschools and hospitals, and almost precisely matches its 11% bud-get de�cit. That might have been fudged in the past, since mostfuels were produced by state-owned �rms and the cost of subsi-dies was implicit rather than paid in cash. But with local con-sumption growing rapidly, Egypt has lately become a net import-er. Its central-bank reserves have dropped from $36 billion to $16billion since the revolution in February 2011.

The IMF reckons that in two out of three Arab countries en-ergy subsidies account for more than 5% of GDP, whereas foodsubsidies in the region average only 0.7%. It is true that in placeslike Egypt cheap transport has encouraged mobility and cheappower has favoured investment in energy-intensive industriessuch as fertilisers and cement. But the bene�ts tend to be skewedto the owners of factories and gas-guzzlers. The IMF estimatesthat 50% of the energy subsidies go to the wealthiest �fth of thepopulation in Sudan and only 3% to the poorest �fth.

Rolling back the subsidies is a tricky business, but it can andmust be done. Some countries, such as Jordan and Yemen, havealready taken painful measures and so far survived the conse-quences. Libya, too, has been surprisingly bold for a countrywhere petrol has been cheaper than water for a generation. Itscurrent budget provides for sharply higher petrol and electricityprices and a shift in the subsidies to monthly cash transfers ofabout $500 per citizen. �It sounds like a lot, but this will actuallysave the government a ton of money,� says Faisal Gergab, chiefeconomist at the Libyan Investment Authority.

For two years the IMF has been dangling a $4.8 billion loanpackage in front of Egypt. This could unlock billions more inmultilateral and bilateral aid, but it is conditional on budget re-form, which in turn depends on �xing the worsening energymuddle. Egypt’s next government will have to knuckle under, nomatter how unpopular that may make it. And so, eventually, willcountries such as Saudi Arabia. �Now is the time to reform,� saysJoe Saddi, the chairman of Booz & Co, an American consultancywith a strong base in the region. �They have the money and theyhave the time.�

Among friends

Mr Saddi has another suggestion: that Arabs should inte-grate their economies. This is not a new idea. Before the �rstworld war, Mr Saddi notes, people and goods moved freelyacross Arab borders. The Arab League was founded in 1945 tostrengthen regional ties. In the 1960s and 1970s many joint insti-tutions were launched to exchange aid, expertise and invest-ment among Arab states.

Those hopeful times saw a �rst big wave of migration to theGulf. In those early years of the oil boom, its bounty was seen asbest shared among brothers. Fellow Arabs received the bulk ofArab development aid and made up some 72% of the Gulf’s ex-patriate labour force. Libya, Iraq and Algeria were also importantdestinations for migrant workers.

These days fellow Arabs account for barely a quarter of theGulf’s expat workforce, and not just because Asian workers willaccept lower pay. For political reasons, Gulf monarchies have ex-pelled large numbers of other Arabs from time to time, such asPalestinians from Kuwait and nearly a million Yemenis fromSaudi Arabia in the 1990s. New campaigns today, under the guise

of rationalising labour markets or prosecuting people who haveoutstayed their visas, are targeting Shia Lebanese in Kuwait topunish Hizbullah and suspected Islamists in the United ArabEmirates. As many as 300,000 Yemenis in Saudi Arabia also riskexpulsion as part of a plan to open more jobs to Saudi citizens.

Arab borders remain more jealously guarded than those inmost other parts of the world. True, countries such as Egypt, Iraqand, more grudgingly, Jordan and Lebanon have generouslyopened their doors to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.Most Arab countries still insist on visas for those from elsewherein the region, although some restrictions have been eased.

Open wider

Some irksome barriers remain. Unbelievably, the 1,000-mile-long frontier between Morocco and Algeria, countries thathave similar populations and living standards and are culturally,linguistically and historically close, has been sealed for the past19 years. Few people in either country even remember why theirgovernments shut it (Morocco accused Algeria of involvement ina hotel bombing in Marrakech that killed two tourists). Openingit up would let poor border towns revert from their current con-centration on smuggling to more legitimate trade. More impor-tant, access to Algeria’s cash-rich but goods-poor market couldquickly add $2 billion a year to Morocco’s more dynamic private-

Father state provides


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sector economy, economists say.Given the vast disparities in wealth, opening all Arab bor-

ders is not a realistic option. But there are certainly bene�ts �ow-ing among Arab nations. Remittances from the Gulf to otherArab countries are currently worth about $35 billion a year, sup-porting whole villages in places such as Upper Egypt and Sudan.In 2009 remittances made up 16% of Jordan’s GDP. According tothe World Bank, the Gulf states have been the world’s most gen-erous donors of aid as a share of GDP. Most of this has gone tofellow Arab states, often at crucial times such as after Israel’s dev-astation of Gaza in 2009.

In the peak year to date, 2008, direct investment from theGulf states in the rest of the region amounted to $35 billion. Firmssuch as Qatari Diyar, the UAE’s Emaar and Kuwait’s Khara�Group have launched giant property developments in manyArab capitals as well as in tourist destinations along the Red andMediterranean seas. Private Gulf investors are also putting a lotof money into stock exchanges in cities such as Casablanca, Cai-ro and Amman.

There could be much more of this. �It’s a perfect match,�says McKinsey’s Kito de Boer. �The Gulf has about $1 trillion tospend, and that’s about what is needed in regional investment.�The trouble lies with the investment climate in receiving coun-tries. And that is a matter of politics more than economics. 7

The IMFreckonsthat in twoout of threeArabcountriesenergysubsidiesaccount formore than5% of GDP

ALI AHMED SAID is no stranger to controversy. The 83-year-old poet, better known by his pen name, Adunis, has

lived in exile from his native Syria since 1956. Revered as a fatherof modernism�and sometimes hailed as an Arab T.S. Eliot�hehas also been reviled as too harsh a critic. In 2006 he famouslydeclared the �extinction� of the Arabs. Fear of freedom, he said,had made them lose the creative will to change the world.

Yet Adunis has not been happy with the Arab spring either.He faults its revolutionaries for trying to topple rulers rather thanseeking change from within. By using the same vocabulary ofpower as the regimes they oppose, he says, they risk substitutingone kind of absolutism for another: religious dogma for state ide-ology. He has infuriated Syrian rebels by telling them to shun vi-olence, calling instead, from the safety of Paris, for dialogue evenas the Assad government was killing its own people.

It does not help that Adunis was born into the same minor-ity Alawite faith as Syria’s embattled president. Some rebelshave accused him of sectarian allegiance to the regime. Othersshowed what they thought of people like him when in Februarythey sliced the head o� a bronze statue in the war-ravaged city ofMa’arrat Numan, 80km south of Aleppo. That monument was atribute to its most famous son, the 10th-century blind poet al-Ma’arri, an illustrious �gure in the long Arab tradition of mor-dant sceptics to which Adunis belongs.

Pessimism about where the Arab world is going is under-standable, especially in view of what is happening in Syria. Butperhaps Adunis is also being over-hasty in dismissing the entireArab spring as a game of musical chairs. Across the region, evenin countries without any regime change, more subtle contestsare playing out that may bring about deeper transformations inArab societies.

It is often noted, for instance, that Arab monarchies haveproved more resistant to revolution than republics. This is not be-cause revolutionary pressures have been absent. Some 40,000Moroccans took to city streets in February 2011, at the same timeas revolutions were taking place elsewhere. Morocco has suf-fered sporadic protests ever since, as has another kingdom, Jor-dan. At least 50,000 citizens in Kuwait, a huge number for a smallstate, turned out for peaceful demonstrations last November.

Even in the most autocratic of autocracies, Saudi Arabia,dissent has been rising. Among the kingdom’s long-repressed10% Shia minority, this is to be expected. Concentrated in the oil-rich Eastern Province but largely excluded from sharing its im-mense bounty, the Shias have been increasingly restless witness-es to the harsh suppression of their co-religionists in Bahrain, ashort distance away. Clashes with police have left some 17 SaudiShias dead since February 2011.

More surprising has been a small but resilient movement,led largely by Saudi women, calling for the release of relativesimprisoned under sweeping anti-terrorist laws. Many of theseprotesters are deeply conservative, yet their demands are thesame as those of Saudi liberals, including human-rights advo-cates, who have vocally backed the prisoners’ cause. A furtherecho comes from exiled dissidents, the best-known of whom, ananonymous critic of the ruling Al Saud family who goes by the

Constitutionbuilding

The long march

After the revolution comes the slow business of

devising the machinery of change


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pseudonym of Mujtahid, has more than 1m Twitter followers.Adunis is right that Arab revolutions have gained power

and momentum by uniting, if only �eetingly, to oust detestedstrongmen. That strength of purpose is missing in Arab monar-chies since royal rulers are still widely perceived as legitimate.Their critics are asking instead for a new social contract that willchange the nature of the relationship between citizens and state.

In Kuwait the chief demand was for repeal of an electorallaw seen as giving the ruling Al Sabah family too much in�uenceover elections for the country’s 50-man parliament. Skewedelectoral laws have been a focus of Jordan’s protests too, alongwith calls for a more equitable distribution of wealth and power.In Morocco the main demands were for an end to corruption,more freedom of speech and a new constitutional order to re-duce the overweening in�uence of the royal court. For Saudis thelist is longer and more varied because their vast kingdom hasfew representative institutions of any kind.

Arab monarchs have parried such demands in di�erentways. At the outset of the Arab spring Kuwait’s Sheikh Jaber al-Sabah made a cash gift worth about $3,500 to every citizen,along with stacks of food vouchers. Ignoring the rising discon-tent that culminated in last year’s marches, he forced throughelections on his own terms in December, prompting a widely ob-served boycott. His government has also prosecuted critics andsometimes dealt with them harshly. But Kuwait still stands out asthe most politically open of the Gulf states. Sheikh Jaber agreedto refer his electoral law to the courts. A recent ruling upheld thecontroversial rules, but ordered parliament to be dissolved andnew elections to be held. Kuwait’s opposition is likely to main-tain a strong campaign for reforms that go beyond technicalities.

King Abdullah of Jordan, not being a member of the Gulfclub of oil-rich nations, had to bend further with the wind. Acommission he appointed to amend the country’s 1952 constitu-tion proposed changes such as electing the prime minister, scrap-ping press laws that allow journalists to be jailed, permitting po-litical parties to be formed and redrawing constituency bound-aries. These looked progressive, but the royal court still retainedall the levers of power. Islamist groups object to a ban on reli-gious parties and journalists bridle at continued restrictions.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco seemingly went further,setting up a panel to rewrite the country’s constitution in full.

Moroccans were invited to respond to an online draft of the newcharter which gently trimmed the king’s considerable preroga-tives. Put to a referendum in July 2011, it passed with a claimed98.5% in favour. When the mildly Islamist Justice and Develop-ment party proved the strongest in parliamentary elections, theking dutifully made its leader prime minister.

This apparently smooth transition has helped sustain Mo-rocco’s impressive economic growth. Yet things are not as happyas they appear. The secretive royal court retains vast holdings insectors such as energy, property development, banking and in-surance. Repression of dissent, and particularly of the press andof more radical Islamist factions, continues much as before.There is no sign of widespread protest, but pressures may wellmount again with time.

The case for patience

In Saudi Arabia, too, dissent for the most part remains fo-cused on speci�c issues. The state has honed its skills at co-optingopponents and exploiting divisions between the country’s reli-giously conservative majority and Westernised liberals. Sinceboth the king and his crown prince are old and ailing, even Sau-dis impatient for change accept that patience is the best coursefor now. Yet calls for a shift towards constitutional monarchy areno longer con�ned to the small educated elite. Even the religioushierarchy has slowly moved away from the strict Wahhabistdoctrine of obedience to the sovereign, and some of its membersnow argue for setting limits to his rule.

Events in the neighbouring emirate of Qatar have alsojolted Saudi minds. Last month Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who at 61 was already the youngest reigning monarch inthe Gulf, handed power to his 33-year-old son, Sheikh Tamim.The new emir soon announced sweeping changes in his cabinetthat have, in e�ect, empowered a younger generation. Qatar re-mains an undiluted autocracy, but the precedent of a highly pop-ular ruler resigning at the height of his powers is signi�cantnonetheless. The subjects of Sultan Qaboos of Oman, for in-stance, may ask more loudly why, after 43 years at the helm, theirchildless ruler has yet to name a potential successor.

All these monarchies have shown some agility in respond-ing to their people’s demands. But the past two years haveshown just how widespread and persistent those demands have

been, and how similar they are across theregion. Everywhere citizens are calling formore justice, transparency, accountabil-ity, limits to arbitrary rule, more equitableeconomic policies, freedom of speechand the devolution of central power. Allthese changes require a new constitution-al order, making it vital that Arab coun-tries get their constitutions right.

The record so far looks unpromising.Aside from the monarchies that have tin-kered with their constitutions to calm thecrowds, three Arab republics, Iraq, Syriaand Egypt, have adopted completely newnational charters in recent years, and Tu-nisia is due to do so soon. Libya, Sudan,and Yemen are further behind. Algeria’sgovernment is also proposing signi�cantconstitutional reform. These countrieshave adopted widely di�ering approach-es, but all face similar problems.

The �rst to act was Iraq, which un-der American occupation in 2005launched a new constitution with much

Egypt’s newconstitut-ion provedtrouble-some, tothe MuslimBrothers asmuch asanyone



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fanfare. This was never going to be easy, given the country’s eth-nic and sectarian divisions, its history of dictatorship and politi-cal volatility, the need to share the spoils of vast oil wealth andthe impatience of the American occupiers to see rapid results.Most Sunni Arab politicians boycotted the drafting, whichmeant that their constituents’ needs were poorly represented.Their absence helped Iraq’s 15% Kurdish minority make big gainsin the new order, winning terms for autonomy that come close tooutright independence in the north. The Shia majority also se-cured political dominance for the �rst time in Iraq’s history.

But the constitution has not helped peace along. Sunni Ira-qis have grown increasingly restless at being shut out, as they seeit, from much of the business of government. They feel undulytargeted under sweeping laws against terrorism passed by Shiamajorities and enforced by Shia-dominated government forces.Since last December regions with a Sunni majority have been ina state of semi-permanent revolt. Recruitment to radical jihadistgroups has surged and the hideous cycle of sectarian attacks andcounter-attacks, which had died down four years ago, has re-started with a vengeance.

This is not wholly the fault of the hastily written constitu-

tion, but its vague wording has notably failed to check the pow-ers of the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. He has ridden rough-shod over opponents, at times ruling, in e�ect, by decree.Exploiting his titular role as commander-in-chief, he has ap-pointed loyalists throughout the armed forces and the police andformed brigades under his personal command.

Vagueness about the limits to Kurdish autonomy has alsogenerated friction, particularly over oil revenues. Kurdish federalauthorities have lured foreign �rms with generous contracts. Thecentral government has reacted by closing pipelines, delayingrevenue transfers and moving troops to the Kurdish frontier.

Something to hold onto

Yet Iraqis still cling to the constitution as an island of orderin a sea of chaos. Most Sunnis do not so much want Mr Maliki tobe overthrown as their grievances to be redressed. Along withprospering Shias in the south, they are beginning to see the pos-sibilities of the clauses allowing regions to declare autonomy, onwhich the Kurds had insisted. Federalism, once rejected as anAmerican-inspired plot to break up the country, is now morewidely accepted as a potential solution to its ills. If this works inIraq, federalism could be a model for other all-too-unitary statessuch as Syria, Yemen and even, some day, Saudi Arabia.

Egypt’s constitution-writing experience has been shorterand less violent but equally frustrating. The Muslim Brother-hood was determined to anchor the �Islamic� gains made in itselection victory in 2011in a new national charter. Egypt’s secular-leaning courts tried to mute their enthusiasm, but Mr Morsi is-sued a decree conferring legal immunity on his own rulings, aswell as on the Islamist-dominated body charged with writingthe new constitution. This provoked big protests, but they didnot prevent the draft constitution from being put to a referendumand approved by a 64% majority last December.

It almost immediately proved troublesome, to the MuslimBrotherhood as much as anyone. Both the religious scholars andEgypt’s constitutional court rejected various draft bills, as theconstitution allowed them to do, including one to prepare for theelection of a new parliament. This left Mr Morsi having to rely ona rump senate for a legislature which was widely viewed as ille-gitimate. An opinion survey conducted by James Zogby, anAmerican pollster, recently found that, six months after the con-stitution was proclaimed, a majority of Egypt’s voters wanted itscrapped. They may now get their way. Egypt’s generals havetemporarily suspended the constitution and charged the Su-preme Court with swiftly producing a better version, to be put toa new referendum. This is a dangerous and disruptive precedent,but it may yet come up with a more workable and widely accept-ed national charter.

Tunisia is the only Arab country so far to take enough timeand trouble over its constitution. Its dominant Islamists saidfrom the outset that they would not try to impose controversialclauses, such as enshrining Islamic sharia law as a key compo-nent of the legal code. Its temporary legislature, elected in Octo-ber 2011 mainly to draw up a constitution, has consulted widely.The constitution is likely to pass with a two-thirds majority ofthe assembly later this summer.

Clearly, setting new rules is not enough, just as electionsalone do not make democracy. The Arab world will also have torebuild and maintain institutions such as independent courtsand free media. Yet amid the region-wide cacophony of gun�reand shouting crowds, such institutions are indeed taking root. Incafés and on internet forums, debates are being conducted witha passion and open-mindedness that will not soon die down.Ordinary people across the Arab world, and not just educatedcity folk, are determined to make their voices heard. 7

One man, one vote in Iraq


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would inspire the people, but itseems the ambitions of mostEgyptians are for something loos-er-�tting, more individual andmore stylish. Other would-beleaders, take note.

It is a shame that Egyptianshave had to fall back on their armyto sort out the mess. The men inuniform proved cruel and incom-petent masters not long ago, dur-ing the transition from PresidentMubarak to President Morsi. Butother Arabs consider Egypt luckyat least to have a patriotic and pro-fessional army, not a gangsterishmilitia such as Syria’s.

Egypt’s generals have alsolearned hard lessons in the Arabspring and moved quickly to seekcover behind civilian leaders andinstitutions. Few of those institu-tions work well and they face im-mense problems, with a newone�in the shape of a possibleviolent backlash from disgruntledIslamists�now looming. But theresilience and creativity of ordin-ary Egyptians, who are clearlyready to �ght for the freedom theyhave tasted, are an inspiration toArabs everywhere.

It will not be a straightforward journey. Even where changehas started, the experience of politics as an open contest withincommonly accepted boundaries is still novel, and in most casesthose boundaries have yet to be set. The risk of a relapse intostrongman rule remains high. For places where the move toproper public participation has long been frozen, such as Algeriaand Saudi Arabia, any sudden thaw could cause an avalanche.

Faleh Abdel Jabbar, an Iraqi sociologist, gives warning thatfor now in most Arab countries �all the elements that theorysays should build democracy are absent, and all those thatshould prevent it are present.� The middle classes are weak, clan-nishness prevails, and oil-soaked states see no need for consentfrom citizens they do not need to tax. That equation is changing,but it will take time.

Hope reinforced

Yet for all the pitfalls, the spirit of the Arab spring remainsalive. Everywhere, to di�erent degrees, barriers of fear have beenbroken. A generation ago Saadallah Wannous, a Syrian play-wright, famously lamented that his people were �sentenced tohope�. Those hopes have strengthened and the sentence feelslighter. A recent region-wide survey of attitudes by the Arab Cen-tre for Research and Policy Studies, based in Qatar, found thatmost Arabs see their revolutions as positive overall, are con�-dent they will achieve their aims and consider democracy thebest form of government.

Perhaps more strikingly, although most respondents de-scribed themselves as religious, a strong majority among Arabssay that governments should not use religion to win popularsupport. They also feel that no one has the right to condemn peo-ple for interpreting Islam di�erently, or for holding a di�erentfaith. Mr Morsi failed to understand that, and paid for it. 7

IF YOU WERE Egypt’s president, what would you do if mil-lions of Egyptians poured into the streets demanding that

you go? During his election campaign last year MuhammadMorsi said that no one would demonstrate against him becauseas president he would faithfully represent the people’s will. �Butif they do,� he added �rmly, �I would be the �rst to resign.�

Egypt’s �rst ever freely elected president did not resign,even when his capacity to govern evaporated as perhaps 10mpeople across the country took to the streets at the end of June toscream for his departure. Instead, like his predecessor, HosniMubarak, only 30 months earlier, Mr Morsi had to be deposed bythe Egyptian army. It was as if the Arab spring had never hap-pened: the �rst of a new generation of leaders, as well as the gen-erals, behaved much as their predecessors did.

This does not look like progress. The abrupt unseating ofMr Morsi would seem to be setting a far more ominous prece-dent than the ousting of the country’s last ageing tyrant. And therude awakening for the Muslim Brotherhood, stripped again ofpower held only brie�y after such a long wait, would seem to be�ashing a danger signal to other ambitious Islamists.

Yet the reprise of Egypt’s revolution is not as strange as allthat, and may presage aftershocks elsewhere. The French revolu-tion took ten years of convulsions before Napoleon emerged,and seven more decades before a stable democratic republictook root. In Russia reverberations after 1917 lasted �ve years; inIran after 1979 more than three.

If Egyptians revolted a second time, it was partly becauseMr Morsi’s government committed sins similar to Mr Mubarak’s.It tried to play the same bossy, patriarchal role but was evenmore inept. The Muslim Brothers turned out to be not somethingnew but a relic from the past. They thought their Islamist dream

After Egypt’s double spring

Keep going

The Arab world’s road to democracy was always

unlikely to be smooth

What’s the buzz on the street?

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