Us Approaches to the Arab Uprisings: International Relations and Democracy Promotion 9781350989634, 9781786733115

Citation preview

Amentahru Wahlrab is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Tyler. His research interests lie at the intersection of globalization, political economy, political violence, and political social theory. He is the co-author, with Manfred B. Steger, of What is Global Studies? Theory and Practice (2017). Michael J. McNeal is Adjunct Instructor at MSU Denver and also teaches political philosophy and US foreign policy at other universities in Denver, Colorado. He has traveled widely throughout the Middle East and his work focuses on the social construction of group identity and its significance for political legitimacy, as well as the function of ideology in globalization, its transformation of disparate cultures, and related practices of subversion and political resistance.

“Contesting the dominant representations of the uprisings in the MENA region, US Approaches to the Arab Uprising casts a fresh look at these events as it probes into the conflicting relationship between the rhetoric and reality of US foreign policy and its efforts towards democracy promotion in the Arab world. Contributors to the volume unsettle conventional understandings through critically oriented, empirically, theoretically and methodologically rich close readings of the episodes unfolding in a wide range of places – from Syria to Burkina Faso, from Kigali to Washington. Accessible to both academic and non-academic audiences, the edited volume provides a valuable resource to anyone who is interested in coming to grips with this crucial moment in global politics.” Asli Calkivik, Istanbul Technical University “Unlike many existing accounts of the Arab uprisings in the early 2010s, this collection critically and astutely examines the crucial links between democratization, pluralism, and political agency in the unfolding of these monumental events. Most importantly, this volume greatly contributes to a better understanding of the pivotal role of Western media in creating self-serving and highly misleading discourses about Middle Eastern politics and societies. Highly recommended!” Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Sociology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa and Honorary Professor of Global Studies, RMIT University

US APPROACHES TO THE ARAB UPRISINGS International Relations and Democracy Promotion

Edited by AMENTAHRU WAHLRAB AND

MICHAEL J. MCNEAL

I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 This paperback edition published 2020 Copyright Editorial Selection © Amentahru Wahlrab and Michael J. McNeal, 2018 Copyright Individual Chapters © Michaelle Browers, Anthony R. DiMaggio, Eric M. Fattor, Nicholas A. Jackson, Isaac A. Kamola, Michael J. McNeal, Meghana Nayak, Larbi Sadiki, Layla Saleh and Amentahru Wahlrab, 2018 Amentahru Wahlrab and Michael J. McNeal have asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7845-3607-7 PB: 978-0-7556-1853-8 ePDF: 978-1-7867-3311-5 eBook: 978-1-7867-2311-6 Series: Library of Middle East History, vol. 67 Typeset by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Contesting the Dominant Narratives of the Arab Spring Michael J. McNeal and Amentahru Wahlrab 1.

Washington’s Liberalist Ideological Stance and Contradictory Policies in the Middle East Michael J. McNeal Introduction Ideology and the Liberalist Ideological Orientation The Liberalist Ideological Orientation and the MENA Region Conclusion

2.

Strategic or Democratic Interests?: Framing US Foreign Policy in the Middle East Uprisings Anthony R. DiMaggio What We Know About Presidents, the Media, and Public Opinion Expectations Findings Alternative Explanations for Patterns in News Coverage?

ix xi xiii 1

11 11 15 27 38 49

52 53 57 60

vi

3.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Manufacturing Consent? The Media and Public Opinion Main Lessons

63 67

The Arab Spring, US Intervention in Libya, and the Lingering Politics of Rwanda Remorse Isaac A. Kamola

75

Intervention in Libya and the Ideological Role of Rwanda Remorse Western Intervention in Rwanda: 1990– 4 Making Peace With Disintervention 4.

5.

Whither Wasatiyya? Locating Egypt’s Liminal Actors, Five Years after the Uprising Michaelle Browers

97

Rethinking Moderation, Locating Liminality Egypt’s Islamist Liminars Liminality, Transitional Justice, and Democracy Promotion

98 102 110

Discourses of Democracy and Gender: How and Why Do Women’s Rights Matter? Meghana Nayak

117

Introduction Dual Narratives of Women as Democratic Actors Situating Western Discourses in State and Global Power Native Informants and the Security State in the Global South Conclusion 6.

77 82 88

Justin Zongo and the Place of the “Arab Spring”: Repression, Resistance, and Revolution in Egypt and Burkina Faso Nicholas A. Jackson Authoritarian Egypt: Contesting Socialism and Neoliberalism Burkina Faso: Protest Culture and the Pivotal Sankara Regime Theorizing Fear, Volition, and Constraint Conclusion: The Challenge of Examining Ruptured Space

117 120 123 127 134

141

145 148 152 156

CONTENTS

7.

8.

A Matter of Protest: The Arab Spring in Syria Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh

163

Introduction The “Hirak” in the Arab Spring Center vs. Periphery and the Dynamic of Change The Arab Spring: Progenitor of Democratization? The Hirak in Syria Narrating the Thuwwar and Ahrar Contestation and Renewal in Revolutionary Narratives Conclusion

163 164 166 169 172 173 176 179

Making Revolutionaries out of “Safe Citizens”: Sovereignty, Political Violence, and the Arab Uprisings 183 Amentahru Wahlrab Introduction The National Security State and its Need for Safe Citizens Making Revolutionaries out of Safe Citizens The Sovereign State Response to Revolutionary Unsafe Citizens The Authoritarian Attempt to Make Unsafe Citizens Safe The US and the West Attempt to Make Unsafe Citizens Safe Conclusion: Making Future Revolutionaries

9.

vii

The Arab Uprisings and Twenty-First-Century Global Crises: Is There an Emerging Network of Global Dissent? Eric M. Fattor Introduction Sketching the Beginnings of a Network of Global Resistance “New” Social and Political Formations New Capabilities New Ideas and Institutions Conclusion

Bibliography Index

183 185 189 190 192 196 197

207 207 208 211 215 220 224 231 257

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Figure 9.1 Twenty-First-Century Counter-Hegemonic Bloc

210

Tables Table 2.1 Executive Priorities in the Arab Uprisings (2011–13)

54

Table 2.2 Salience of Uprisings in the Arab Uprisings (2011 – 13)

58

Table 2.3 Human Rights and the Arab Uprisings (2011– 13)

58

Table 2.4 Democracy and the Arab Uprisings (2011– 13)

59

Table 2.5 Variation in Salience of Human Rights by Country (2011– 13)

60

Table 2.6 Variation in Salience of Democracy by Country (2011– 13)

61

Table 2.7 Human Rights Concerns: A Comparative Assessment by Country and Conflict (2011– 13)

63

Table 2.8 Salience of Protest Events in Public Opinion Surveys (2011– 13)

65

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is a pleasant duty to record our debts of gratitude. First, we want to thank our colleagues, students, and friends at the University of Texas at Tyler, and elsewhere. In particular, Martin Slann, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Texas at Tyler, graciously provided funding for copyediting and indexing. Our editor at I.B.Tauris, Tomasz Hoskins, saw the value in our work the instant he heard our proposal, and for that, as well as his patience, we are especially grateful. Our copyeditor, Emma Simmons, did excellent work in short time. The project was first conceived at the International Studies Association Montreal in 2011 and was begun in earnest at the International Studies Association San Diego in 2012. It was broadened further by including more contributors on a panel at the (cancelled) American Political Science Association in New Orleans in 2012. Over the following year several other contributors rounded out gaps in the discussions that had evolved over this period. Special thanks go to all the contributors to this volume. Due to their diligence, creativity, insight, and patience, it was a pleasure to work on this project and watch it come to fruition. Their quick responses to our requests helped us keep things moving even when, from their perspective, it may have felt stuck in the mud. Lastly, we would like to thank Matthew Weinert for chairing our ISA panel, and for his inputs to the project.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Michaelle Browers is Professor of Politics and International Affairs and directs the Middle East and South Asia Studies Program at Wake Forest University. She is author of Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (2006) and Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (2009), and has edited and contributed to (with Charles Kurzman) An Islamic Reformation? (2003). Her articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Journal of Political Ideologies, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy, Theory and Event, and Third World Quarterly. Anthony R. DiMaggio is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. He is the author of numerous books, including Selling War, Selling Hope (2015) and The Politics of Persuasion (2017). His research focuses on the politics of the mass media, public opinion, social movements, and inequality. Eric M. Fattor is Visiting Professor of Politics and International Relations at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. His research focuses on how new communications technologies and information management techniques have changed the way one understands hegemony in a post-industrial world. His book entitled American Empire and the Arsenal of Entertainment: Soft Power And Cultural Weaponization (2014) looks at how the US has weaponized information and imagery and made the

xiv

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

deployment of entertainment, in lieu of coercion and physical violence, the most effective means of projecting its power. Nicholas A. Jackson is an independent researcher of international development and social movements, currently examining corporate exploitation, resistance, and neoliberal representations in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Recent and forthcoming works address neoliberalism as spectacle (Human Geography), the rapid failure of the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development Project, and strategic management of resistance through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). From 1994 to 1996, he lived and worked in the Anglophone Western highlands of Cameroon. Isaac A. Kamola is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College. He was previously an American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS) New Faculty Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Wesleyan University. His publications include articles in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, International Political Sociology, Third World Quarterly, Polygraph, and Journal of Higher Education in Africa, and a chapter in Thinking International Relations Differently (Tickner and Blaney, eds, 2012) and Globalization, Social Movements and Peacebuilding (Smith and Verdeja, eds, 2013). He is currently working on a book entitled Producing the Global Imaginary (forthcoming). Michael J. McNeal is Adjunct Instructor at MSU Denver and also teaches political philosophy and US foreign policy at other universities in Denver, Colorado. He has traveled widely throughout the Middle East and his work focuses on the social construction of group identity and its significance for political legitimacy, as well as the function of ideology in globalization and its transformation of disparate cultures, practices of subversion and political resistance. Meghana Nayak is Professor of Political Science and teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Pace University, New York. She has published in International Feminist Journal of Politics, International Studies Review, and Women and Politics, and is co-author with Eric Selbin of Decentering International Relations (2010). She is author of Who is Worthy

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xv

of Protection? Gender-Based Asylum and U.S. Immigration Politics (2015). Her work focuses on the politics of gender violence, and feminist and critical approaches to hegemony, security, and migration. Larbi Sadiki is Professor of Arab Democratization at the Department of International Affairs, Qatar University, and author of Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (2009); The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (2004); and with Brieg Powel, Europe and Tunisia: Democratization via Association (2010). He is also the editor of Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power (2013) and Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring: Rethinking Democratization (2015). He is the author of numerous book chapters and scholarly articles in the following journals: Mediterranean Politics, Political Studies, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Irish Studies in International Affairs, and Democratization. Layla Saleh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of International Affairs, Qatar University and the author of US Hard Power in the Arab World: Resistance, the Syrian Uprising, and the War on Terror (2017). Amentahru Wahlrab is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Texas at Tyler. His research interests lie at the intersections of globalization, political economy, political violence, and political social theory. His published works include chapters in The Sage Handbook of Globalization (2014), Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati (2014), Issues in African Political Economies (2017), Rethinking Security in the Twenty-First Century (2017), the book What is Global Studies? Theory and Practice with Manfred B. Steger (2017), and articles in Critique and Perspectives on Global Development and Technology.

INTRODUCTION CONTESTING THE DOMINANT NARRATIVES OF THE ARAB SPRING Michael J. McNeal and Amentahru Wahlrab

The so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings, which began in late 2010, initially garnered support from many Western leaders, democracy and human rights advocates, and even from members of former US President George W. Bush’s administration, who chose to see the uprisings as vindication of the Bush doctrine and the War on Terrorism. However, by the end of 2011 commentators were already writing that the “spring” was turning into a “winter.”1 Prospects for Tunisia and Egypt remained hopeful for some time, but other states that underwent uprisings saw harsh punishment meted out by authoritarian regimes determined to preserve their rule. Popular discourses of democracy and democratization, disseminated by Western media, framed American perceptions of the uprisings as a consequence of long-repressed demands for greater enfranchisement, free and fair elections, and pluralist democracy. Absent from this narrative was an appropriate comparison and analysis of the disparate US foreign policy stances pertaining to the region, the discursive threads linking some of them, the evolution of Washington’s rhetoric, and the practical implications of these for the countries in which uprisings occurred. Therefore, what is most salient to the current collection of essays is a critical analysis of the dominant American discourse which has

2

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

presented the uprisings as a simplistic binary between democracy and authoritarianism. The US has historically promoted democracy for stability and free trade as the centerpiece of its foreign policy. However, this longstanding statement of its policy contradicts mounting empirical evidence of democracy prevention and overthrow.2 Indeed, the complaints expressed by the protestors in Arab Spring uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) were in every case leveled against regimes that the US had long supported. These illiberal regimes had governed capriciously, utilizing various degrees of repression to ensure stability at the expense of their own citizens. This volume on US approaches to the Arab Spring reevaluates the relationship between the rhetoric and the reality of America’s democracy promotion and its effects on international relations. The essays herein critically examine explanations of the uprisings, both scholarly and popular. While the Arab Spring has been the subject of numerous journalistic3 and historical4 accounts, this volume offers a theoretically rich and critically informed analysis of the revolutions, focusing not on democracy diffusion but on political agency. Specifically, it takes issue with the notion that the uprisings are a developmental phase in the inexorable march of democratization, and, the other side of the binary, that the peoples of the MENA are incapable of establishing viable, pluralistic democratic institutions. Rather, this volume ascertains the extent to which these uprisings exemplified the essential contestedness of democracy itself.5 The earliest accounts framed the uprisings as part of a global process of democratization that, it was hoped, would culminate in electoralbased systems of representation governed by the rule of law and informed by a set of liberal norms. On this reading, the Arab Spring constitutes another wave6 in a larger process of global transformation toward a world entirely comprising democratic states. This volume challenges this and related assumptions as it reexamines the uprisings in the MENA. However, it is (and was then) unclear that the Arab Spring uprisings ever comprised the sort of “awakening” their proponents imagined they did, or hoped they would. It is doubtful that any of the uprisings have generated viable or lasting democratic institutions, which will leave increasingly frustrated peoples throughout the region more dissatisfied

INTRODUCTION

3

with their continued disenfranchisement. A number of notional gaps have opened between the respective understandings of outside analysts, the region’s politicians, political parties, and peoples in the MENA, which undercut the aspirations of progressive (liberalizing, prodemocracy) protestors and the legitimacy of their demands, to refocus attention on statist (reactive) solutions to their politically destabilized social and political order and economic life. Contributors also describe the substantive connections between democracy protestors in the MENA and diverse anti-neoliberal and global justice movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados. US Approaches to the Arab Uprisings: International Relations and Democracy Promotion variously examines Washington’s contradictory policies, specifically its rhetorical support for democratization and simultaneous “kid-glove” treatment of allies such as Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia in response to their repressive crackdowns on pro-democracy reformers. The contest that generated the uprisings originated in the gap between elite-imposed, ersatz democratic institutions and increasing demands for meaningful political and economic enfranchisement among the region’s working class and poor. That contest remains vital. Among other things, the uprisings strove to remove the pretense of legitimacy that masked kleptocratic, authoritarian regimes across the region. The agonal forces that drove those demands for reform (themselves demands for dignity) continue to incite challenges to illiberal rule. There have been numerous debates throughout the MENA concerning the nature of democracy7 and its attendant concept of civil society.8 On the one hand, there is a prevalent elitist assumption perpetrated by orientalists that Arab culture, which they conflate with Islam, is incompatible with democracy, and by extension, political legitimacy. While this chauvinism is belied by polls9 that indicate consistent majority support for liberalizing reforms throughout the MENA, Western neoliberal democracy promotion remains essentially orientalist, as many of its proponents dismiss the possibility that Arabs can rule themselves without being appropriately trained in the neoliberal mode of institution building.10 On the other hand, there is a large literature that examines the long history of political activity and contestation in the region, focusing primarily on individual actors and agents. For instance, much has been written about Egypt’s multi-decade experience of anticolonial and antiauthoritarian protests and workers’ strikes.11

4

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

This volume seeks to situate anti-authoritarian protests in individual countries within a broader global context. Its contributors do so by critically evaluating the rhetorics, policies, and ideologies of various attempts to shape the debate about the uprisings. This includes the tension between official Western responses to the uprisings, which were conditioned by the conventional narrative of democratization, and protestor reactions which challenged disparate ideological commitments (secular/neoliberal, Islamist, neo-Marxian, etc.) and economic and political practices. A few of the authors herein interrogate democratic theory along a spectrum of theoretical perspectives, from orthodox12 approaches to constructivism. Yet each examine whether the putative sense of awakened identity suggested by the phrase “Arab Spring” is a Western projection and misreading of events, the purposes it may serve, and to what extent the revolutions occurring within Arab societies really indicate a new political consciousness. While not about democracy, per se, this volume develops from questions critical to current issues in political theory and international politics theory that are integrally related to theorizing about democracy. It is about forms of agency, political legitimacy, and enfranchisement that may develop out of the uprisings, democratic or otherwise. This pertains to the potentials generated by the uprising for authentic selfdetermination and meaningful sovereignty in the MENA and beyond. The authors question the applicability of the hegemonic forms of elite democracy imposed by the West. This includes challenging the longimposed American (and European) norms of democratic legitimation as universally efficacious. A number of the essays critique the American and European receptions of the uprisings insofar as they functioned as a means of generating the (short-lived) narrative that a “new wave” of democratic transition was occurring throughout the MENA region. Questions that guide author contributions include: Are the US and its Western allies truly in favor of self-determination in the MENA, and, if so, what forms of political organization and governance do they consider acceptable? What does Washington mean when it claims to support democratic reform throughout the region, and how does this square with the anti-authoritarian ethos of the uprisings? How do the aspirations of Arab and African protestors (among others) fit into this narrative? To what extent did the anti-authoritarian uprisings in the MENA and elsewhere impugn the espousal of liberal principles and

INTRODUCTION

5

associated neoliberal practices by Western democracy promoters by showing them to be disingenuous and unduly constraining to the region’s liberal reformers? Are these uprisings generative of potentials to realize more authentic forms of representation and to deepen political enfranchisement over more prevalent (neoliberal/elite democratic) alternatives? And how might they affect the attainment of a level of legal and political equality that elite-dominated forms of democracy frustrate? Drawing on relevant data and textual evidence linked to democracy promotion efforts and responses within the MENA, this volume identifies a number of theoretical and practical inconsistencies that suggest a rising tension between promoters of democracy and the agency of anti-authoritarian protestors, both within the region and beyond it. Among the many issues examined in the essays comprising this volume, the authors question how the US might have supported these uprisings without destabilizing an already insecure region. Furthermore, they ask whether uprisings can be liberatory if they do not immediately produce democratic institutions. Generally agreeing that the US has approached the uprisings in both inconsistent and predictable ways, the authors in this collection suggest that while Washington’s support for the uprisings was represented as promoting democratic transitions and the liberalization of governing practices, its efforts toward these beneficent goals was insufficient at best, and at worst insincere. Authors in this volume also examine how convulsions of popular dissent throughout the MENA region affected minority rights and furthered efforts to protect them therein. Feminist perspectives on the uprisings provide insights into the prospects for women’s emancipation in the region. Finally, the competing ideological, political, and geo-strategic motivations of Arab state actors and outside powers are considered in light of the unintended reinvigoration of Western-backed authoritarian regimes in the MENA region that resulted from the revolts. Michael McNeal’s chapter, “Washington’s Liberalist Ideological Stance and Contradictory Policies in the Middle East,” traces the broad political and philosophical disposition (or ideological stance) and corresponding policy agenda that has informed US foreign policy since World War II. McNeal writes that “[i]n policy terms this has consisted of the occasionally earnest pursuit of democratization, institutional transparency and guarantees of the rights of the individual, and a

6

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

consistent public appearance of working to realize those goals.” He then examines the ways in which this inadvertently generates contradictory policy preferences to show how Washington’s underlying ideological orientation has advanced certain of its foreign policy aims while unintentionally hindering others. McNeal’s chapter gets to the core of the issue driving the remaining chapters, the contradictions between the rhetoric and the reality of the US approaches to the Arab uprisings and the overall conception of democracy and democracy promotion. Anthony R. DiMaggio’s chapter, “Strategic or Democratic Interests? Framing US Foreign Policy in the Middle East Uprisings,” addresses the issue of what events people in the US paid attention to and why. Specifically, DiMaggio focuses the reader’s attention on media coverage of uprisings in the MENA and issues not covered by the media. He examines “how the political discourses in the US media influenced what rebellions American citizens followed and what they thought of them, in addition to reviewing how lack of media attention to some protests resulted in them being omitted from public consideration.” DiMaggio’s work combines quantitative research methodology with rich political theory sources in order to show how (political, economic, and military) elites shape the news. Finally, this chapter furthers the guiding question of this volume, which pertains to the coherence of US foreign policy rhetoric and practice, and contradictions arising therefrom. Isaac A. Kamola’s chapter, “The Arab Spring, US Intervention in Libya, and the Lingering Politics of Rwanda Remorse,” focuses on the question of US foreign policy rhetoric versus the reality of its practice by closely rereading the case of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Employing his concept of “Rwanda remorse,” or the oft-stated lament that had the US only intervened in Rwanda there might not have been a genocide, Kamola reveals how the opposite is actually the case. He argues that the US was already intervening in Rwanda long before the genocide and actually helped to create the conditions that produced it. Kamola’s chapter limns key themes of this book by showing that Washington’s claims to support human rights and promote democracy are deeply contradicted by its policies. Indeed, McNeal’s, DiMaggio’s, and Kamola’s chapters present a coherent picture of the uses of US foreign policy rhetoric to defend not those stated ideals but rather narrowly defined conceptions of its own national interest.

INTRODUCTION

7

Michaelle Browers’ chapter, “Whither Wasatiyya? Locating Egypt’s Liminal Actors Five Years after the Uprising,” focuses on the understudied notion of liminal actors, those actors who serve to bring disparate groups together. As most introductions to the topic of democracy note, what makes a democracy exceptional is not simply that elections are held but that the losers willingly give up power without bloodshed. Liminal actors help to make these peaceful transfers of power possible. Concerning Egypt’s prospects for political reform, Browers examines “actors who are willing to build connections and engage across divides, to think and act independently of existing structures of power in order to pursue [. . .] an alternative to authoritarianism.” She argues that Washington’s approach to the Egyptian uprising (and uprisings elsewhere in the MENA) have had deleterious effects on them. Instead of promoting democracy and the liminal actors that help make it possible, the US supported a regime that undercut the very forces it claimed to support. Meghana Nayak’s chapter, “Discourses of Democracy and Gender: How and Why Do Women’s Rights Matter?,” assesses the rhetoric of democracy promotion in the context of the gendered discourses on women’s rights and the Arab uprisings. In keeping with key themes of this volume, she argues that violations of women’s rights are often used by states to justify further violations of human rights in general. As she writes, discourse about democracy and gender matter because “ideas and stories about the suppression of women’s rights often fail to align with the wide variety of empirical realities on the ground.” Nayak argues that social scientists and philosophers must consider “the production, dissemination, and use of these discourses” for women’s rights, lest they fail to understand certain motivations of US foreign policy, and the policies of various regimes in the MENA. Nicholas A. Jackson’s chapter, “Justin Zongo and the Place of the ‘Arab Spring’: Repression, Resistance, and Revolution in Egypt and Burkina Faso,” focuses readers’ attention to the under-examined case of the West African nation of Burkina Faso as it compares to the media attention paid to Egypt during its uprising. Jackson notes that although there were similar protests in Burkina Faso, there was very little media coverage of it in the US. This “non-narrative” stands in stark contrast to the close scrutiny of Egypt’s uprising in the US media. Analyzing neoliberalism’s impact on the lived spaces of the people in Burkina Faso

8

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

and Egypt to rethink repression, Jackson examines key themes of this volume as they pertain to potentials for resistance and revolution. In contrasting these two cases, Jackson argues that carefully accounting for the broad effects of political economy on the uprisings and the function of corresponding ideology is essential for understanding the region and transforming US foreign policy. Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh’s chapter, “A Matter of Protest: The Arab Spring in Syria,” offers further evidence that the one-size-fits-all policy of US democracy promotion is doomed to fail. Sadiki and Saleh carefully examine the different kinds of al-hirak, or “peoplehood,” present in Syria since the uprisings there began. They trace disparate forms of al-hirak through the nonviolent protest that later developed into violent resistance to the Assad regime. These range from the civic to the unruly, both of which must be considered when seeking to understand democracy, democracy promotion, and polities in general. Sadiki and Saleh argue that actors at the margins are worthy of sustained attention: “Conventional wisdom in the field of international relations (IR) has ignored the stubborn persistence of the political margin or peoplehood in shaping politics both regionally and globally.” Their analysis shows that while instability remains the salient feature of many MENA states in which uprisings occurred, there continues to exist a peoplehood, albeit a hirak unwelcomed by Arab autocrats. Amentahru Wahlrab’s chapter, “Making Revolutionaries out of ‘Safe Citizens’: Sovereignty, Political Violence, and the Arab Uprisings,” adopts Cynthia Weber’s concepts of “safe” and “unsafe” citizenship as they relate to state sovereignty. Safe citizens reinforce and stabilize the modern state; they do not point out or protest against, for example, state violations of human rights. When citizens dissent, nonviolently or violently, they become “unsafe” or revolutionary, according to Wahlrab. By adopting Weber’s conception of safe and unsafe citizenship to the Arab Spring, Wahlrab reveals the tension between the US foreign policy of democracy promotion and its stated preference for regime stability (even if that regime is authoritarian). Wahlrab’s chapter reconsiders the unruliness of democracy to problematize both the US approach to the Arab uprisings and its policy of democracy promotion. In “The Arab Uprisings and Twenty-First-Century Global Crises: Is There an Emerging Network of Global Dissent?,” Eric Fattor examines

INTRODUCTION

9

“the larger global socioeconomic and political context in which” the Arab uprisings occurred. He shows how global structural forces produce the conditions under which protests erupted in the MENA. Focusing on the processes of globalization and the role of social media, Fattor implicates information technology in the production of what he calls “electronic Jacobins,” networks of “futureless” students, and a networked “wretched of the earth.” He then considers the possibility of a global revitalization of democracy and suggests strategies for those interested in on-the-ground democratic practice. Thus, Fattor’s essay augments themes in previous chapters that focused on various forms of personhood and resistance to authoritarianism, as well as sources of democratic change.

Notes 1. David W. Lesch, “The Arab Spring – and winter – in Syria,” Global Change, Peace & Security 23/3 (2011), pp. 421 – 6; Mary Ann Tetre´ault, “The winter of the Arab Spring in the Gulf monarchies,” Globalizations 8/5 (2011), pp. 629– 37; Vijay Prashad, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, 1st edn (Oakland: AK Press, 2012). 2. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, 1st edn (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2006); William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 3. Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren, The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). 4. Lloyd C. Gardner, The Road to Tahrir Square: Egypt and the United States from the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak (New York: New Press, 2011); James L. Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 5. W. B. Gallie, “Essentially contested concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955), pp. 167 – 98. 6. Samuel P. Huntington, “The clash of civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72/3 (1993), pp. 22–49. 7. Larbi Sadiki, The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Larbi Sadiki, Rethinking Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 8. Michaelle Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities, 1st edn (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006); Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

10

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

9. “Overwhelming majorities [of Muslims] endorse liberal principles including [the notions that] the will of the people should be the basis of governance, government leaders should be chosen through free elections and that there should be full freedom of religion.” Steven Kull, “Why Muslims are still mad at America,” Global Public Square Blogs, CNN, September 5, 2011. Available at http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/05/why-muslims-are-stillmad-at-america/ (accessed March 20, 2017). 10. Larry Jay Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries, vols 1 – 4 (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1988); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Larry Jay Diamond, “Can the whole world become democratic? Democracy, development and international policies,” Center for the Study of Democracy, 2003. Available at http://homepage.univie.ac. at/vedran.dzihic/diamond_2004.pdf (accessed February 22, 2017); Lisa Anderson, “Demystifying the Arab Spring: parsing the differences between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya,” Foreign Affairs 90/3 (2011), pp. 2 – 7. 11. Bruce K. Rutherford, Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Joel Beinin, “Workers’ protest in Egypt: Neo-liberalism and class struggle in 21st century,” Social Movement Studies 8/4 (2009), pp. 449 – 54; Joel Beinin and Fre´de´ric Vairel, Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 12. We are always operating critical theories from within a site constructed by orthodox IR theory. See for example, Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977).

CHAPTER 1 WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE AND CONTRADICTORY POLICIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST Michael J. McNeal

America is the principal guarantor of security in the [MENA] region. Secretary of State John Kerry, July 28, 2015

Introduction In pursuing its stated aspirations for the region and its particular policy aims, the United States (US) has responded to the so-called “Arab Spring” uprisings (from late 2010 to mid-2013) in a number of seemingly, or actually contradictory, ways. These inconsistencies raise questions about the coherence of those aims that lead to an examination of the values and preconceptions informing them. In this essay I examine the deep ideological orientation that operates within and behind Washington’s stance toward the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which has informed America’s disposition toward the region since roughly the end of World War II (WWII). This orientation impels a certain posture by US administrations and conditions the determination of America’s national interests and policy objectives, as well as their responses to events.

12

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

This prevailing liberalist ideological orientation originates in the values of philosophical liberalism and post-industrial, late-modernity’s scientific rationalism as conditioned by America’s position of global hegemony in the aftermath of WWII. It generates tendencies and inclinations that are “realized” via efforts to universalize representative democracy, human rights, and a Western form of consumer culture.1 The notion of a reigning liberalist ideological orientation that is formative of prevailing attitudes toward the region among policy makers in Washington is salient to the development of contemporary events (such as the “Arab Spring” uprisings), and for understanding the response of the US-led “international community” to those events in the post-Cold War era. This ideological set of beliefs transcends moderate partisan differences, and has remained relatively consistent over the last seven decades. Recognition of it and its functioning augment comprehension of a key source of the foreign policy decisions of the advanced democracies themselves. There is an important sense in which the broadly shared assumptions and prejudices comprising this orientation, which so profoundly informs American policy toward the region, comprises an “ideological” orientation. When the operation of these broadly shared but unacknowledged biases is recognized, the apparent differences between the foreign policy aims of conservative and liberal American administrations since WWII are understood to be far less significant than usually assumed, despite the inflated emphases given those differences by their respective partisan proponents. The exaggerated importance given to partisan ideological differences by popular media and partisan party accounts of foreign policy obfuscates the deep and significant correspondence and consistency between them. Furthermore, the ideological orientation that guides the determination of Washington’s national interests and the formulation of its foreign policy goals has usually corresponded closely with the orientation of its allies, which is no accident. The US and its wartime allies were the instrumental nation states in the creation of the Atlantic/Western European/Trilateral order that was the foundation of the Pax-Americana. Recognition of the ideological drivers of this global project elucidates the source of some key international trends, as well as important sources of the “Arab Spring” uprisings. The source of apparent and often troubling contradictions between the values Washington formally espouses (the articulation of which also

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

13

disseminates the ideological precepts that govern its foreign policy aims), its declared policy goals, and its methods of achieving them receives inadequate scrutiny. Often overlooked in critical assessments of Washington’s policies in the MENA are the ways in which its stated policy goals conflict with the less overt biases operating beneath them. Therefore this essay examines the ideological drivers of Washington’s policy aims via their functioning in discourse and implementation in policy.2 Since WWII the reigning liberalist ideology that has guided US foreign policy commends democracy promotion and material support for democratization efforts as a means of ensuring the human rights and liberal values that, in circular fashion, are believed to safeguard democracy.3 This is a broad political and philosophical stance that, accounting for programmatic variations and (usually slight) differences of emphases, the US has shared with its closest allies and the advanced democracies that have emerged since.4 In policy terms this has consisted of the occasionally earnest pursuit of democratization, institutional transparency and guarantees of the rights of the individual, and a consistent public appearance of working to realize those goals.5 Yet its disparate, sometimes conflicting policy goals have prompted nearly as many rhetorical rationales for its pursuit of policies at odds with the tenets of its liberalist ideology. Consequently, Washington is often seen as engaging in the rhetorical promotion of such discourses as a subterfuge to distract from its support of compliant dictators, some of whom were or are very oppressive and unambiguously illiberal. The hegemonic liberalist ideology unifies the institutional and normative apparatus (dipositif) constituting the so-called “international system.” It imbues this discursive formation and the myriad subjectivities comprising it with the mutually ramifying regularities necessary to sustain its semblance of rationality and intelligibility. This in turn serves to mask its operation and makes the strategies it automatically recommends for ensuring the status quo (namely peace, which is also to say the perpetuation of its philosophical presuppositions and their ever-deeper sublimation) appear incontrovertibly just. What are conventionally thought of as “statist” approaches to human rights, conflict resolution, global trade, international cooperation, and a host of other issues are almost invariably enactments of this liberalist ideology. Invoking Althusser’s theory, it may be said to serve as the foundation of an (arguably “repressive”) ideological inter-state apparatus, in which

14

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

churches and schools function to advance the state, and in which the functioning of (formerly disparate) state apparati are no longer obviously distinct in either their character or their operations. While a few developed nations reject the key presuppositions of the liberalist ideology (e.g. Putin’s Russia, Erdog˘an’s Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia, etc.), most of the governments that reject it are in the developing world (e.g. Sudan, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, North Korea, etc.). Those aforementioned developed nations struggle to reconcile the contradictions this generates within their own societies, which are numerous and tend to resolve in “favor,” as it were, of the liberalist ideology’s presuppositions, and all of the nations that reject these presuppositions exist in a schizophrenic relation to them. The nations of the MENA region are even more compromised in this sense. Nearly all of the governments in the MENA region reject the presuppositions of the liberalist ideology, despite having joined the formal international institutions (e.g. the United Nations, etc.) that promulgate it, and despite in a few notable cases having achieved a high level of socioeconomic development.6 In what follows, I examine some of the tensions this generates. The rhetorical deployment of egalitarian, democratic values and the (“neoliberal”) liberalization of trade, investment, and capital flows, according to the guiding liberalist ideological apparatus – a complex of mutually reinforcing international institutions – has occurred in contradictory ways that are at odds with the earnest pursuit of political equality.7 I argue that inconsistencies between official US rhetoric and certain of its policy responses deflect the US from the deeper constancy and coherency of US policy, some outward permutations of which constitute the source of these inconsistencies. Contradictions between the principal philosophical tenets and corresponding discourses of the governing liberalist ideological orientation, and the rhetorical rationales given to justify particular policy responses, sometimes generate conflicts between Washington’s official policy aims (its good intentions) and its actual policy pursuits (its actions on the ground). By examining sources of the apparent contradictions between the prevailing ideological orientation that drives Washington’s liberalist aspirations throughout the world (disseminated via discourses of individual liberty and self-determination, human rights, democratization, etc.) and its actual foreign policies, the greater part of which are conceived

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

15

to realize them, this chapter explicates the origin and functioning of the liberalist ideological orientation driving US foreign policy. It provides a basis for coordination between the foreign policy responses of the nationstates comprising the Western alliance. It illuminates how its representations of its own policy responses to the Arab uprisings have exemplified the dual operation in its foreign policy. It examines some key ways that dual operation manifests in current US foreign policy throughout the MENA region, to show how its policies frustrate its promotion of liberal values. Finally, it assesses Washington’s role in and responses to the political and humanitarian crises generated by the illiberal “reversals” of the “Arab Spring” uprisings.

Ideology and the Liberalist Ideological Orientation Ideology is a subject that still generates some undue controversy within the discipline of political science. This often takes the form of objections to its alleged vagueness, its changeability, its breadth and difficulties with empirical quantification. These complaints often emanate from the field’s positivists, and culminate in a rejection of ideology as a fuzzy normative matter impervious to definitive description that clearer heads ought to best avoid. I reject this view and maintain, along with others (including Michael Freeden, Anthony Giddens, and Malcolm Hamilton), that ideology is an essential feature of the political in the contemporary world, the operation of which can and needs to be understood and appreciated.8 Furthermore, the complex functions of ideology in political life, from affecting popularly shared perceptions of reality, influencing the convictions and choices of decision makers, and shaping international relations, must be recognized in order to grasp their power as a key driver of events. An appreciation of the significance of ideology’s functions are fundamental to a nuanced comprehension of politics and governance, as well as their study. As Malcolm Hamilton observed in his influential study of the subject, An ideology is a system of collectively held normative and reputedly factual ideas and beliefs and attitudes advocating a particular pattern of social relationships and arrangements, and/or aimed at justifying a particular pattern of conduct, which its proponents seek to promote, realize, pursue or maintain.9

16

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

This is a fairly comprehensive description, but ideology should be specifically understood to include the moral value judgments and shared understandings of justice implicit in liberal ideals of individual freedom, civil rights, universal enfranchisement, the rule of law, the separation of powers, etc., that subtend the political institutions created on their bases. Ideology relates to ideals insofar as the former (moral value judgment) propagate certain corresponding forms of the latter (shared understandings and desired institutional arrangements), which generate and sustain a more or less consistent worldview. The conception of mutually ramifying, deeper principles subtending a broadly shared ideological orientation that operate beneath (or behind) narrower, superficial partisan ideological differences that I advance here is not radical. It finds precedents in Althusser’s notion of the ideological state apparatus and Foucault’s concept of the dispositif. It corresponds with Eagleton’s understanding of ideology as sociocultural and political text, a generator and rationalizer of (particular) social interests, with Geertz’s theory of ideology as a cultural system, and it draws upon Debord’s concept of the spectacle (and spectacularization), and Baudrillard’s understanding of the function of simulacra in contemporary society. Recent works in political theory have proffered related analyses, including Hardt and Negri’s critique of “Empire” and Wolin’s recent identification of totalizing neoliberal discourses spawning the inverted totalitarianism of “managed democracy,” with which my thesis dovetails in some regards. In advancing this broad notion of ideology I reject the crux of Daniel Bell’s famous “end of ideology” thesis, which conflated the alleged irrelevance of ideology to “sensible people” with the proponents of the hegemonic liberalist ideology’s totalization of political life, a process that naturalized, sublimated, and rendered it largely invisible. However, the seeming disappearance of ideology through the naturalization of its myriad operations accounts, at least in part, for Bell’s prescient observation that incremental technological and administrative modifications would thenceforth suffice as the means of altering the function or character of governing political institutions. Negative prejudices toward the subject and study of ideology, and narrow-minded notions of what it is, impede comprehension of its affective role in communities and international relations. Political

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

17

scientists – particularly the dominant positivists within the discipline – often dismiss ideology as a messy or unproductive subject analogous in the ambiguities and difficulties it raises to culture. Ideology is often understood as pertaining primarily to partisan politics, exemplified in the US by the Liberal –Democratic and Conservative –Republican binary. This superficial notion needs to be distinguished from the deeper, shared ideological presuppositions that, with some minor variations, similarly inform the partisan ideological mainstream in all of the advanced democracies. These presuppositions are normalized via liberaldemocratic practices codified in law and become historically entrenched via institutions and traditions. When thoroughly programmatic within and hegemonic over a society (as in the US) or across a cultural realm (the Anglo-European “West”), a shared ideological orientation is formative of the social structures within which individual agency is possible. Insofar as it is foundational to or even formative of an ontological community, it influences conceptions of self and communal membership and the duties pertaining to each. In this regard it has parallels to Hobsbawm’s notion of an “invented tradition,” insofar as it inculcates values that socialize individuals, establish and propagate a sense of community, and legitimate relations of authority.10 This shared ideological orientation, along with the cultural norms with which it corresponds and advances, is determinative of the prevailing mentality within and shared consciousness that shapes contemporary societies throughout the developed (and increasingly the developing) world. As such, it is formative of sociopolitical “reality” and the worldview it transmits. Within the economically advanced democracies the liberalist ideological orientation informs all the “mainstream” partisan political variants and sub-divisions (comprising a partisan spectrum from social democracy on the left to liberal conservatism on the right).11 Importantly, this extends to the ontological and epistemological assumptions (ways of being in and understanding the world) individuals hold about society and of themselves politically. Insofar as an ideological orientation confers broad meanings at the macro-political level (e.g. the nation state), the socializing function of those meanings largely transcend partisan divergences (party differences and disputes) at the micro-political level of individuals in society. Its social transmission reinforces ideologically determined concepts through which individuals understand themselves

18

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

and their communal life, transforming permissible forms of political association. Islamism, understood as a general term for various strains of Islamic religious doctrine (from the relatively moderate to extremely reactionary), and the values and sociopolitical prejudices it commends, might also be said to comprise an ideological stance.12 All of its variants share a sectarian ethos emphasizing the primacy of Islamic faith and ideals in society, including Sharia law, and some (e.g. Wahhabists) advocate strict theocratic rule. Islamism counters the secular, humanist, and progressive principles of the liberalist ideological orientation. Conservative Islamist groups directly challenge Western-oriented elites throughout the region, for reasons of religious doctrine, political resistance, and reasons related to and building upon the anticolonial movement. Islamism has roots (via Sayyid Qutb, among others) in rebellion against the values and political forms that were directly imposed on the Arab-Islamic world by European colonial powers and continue to be advanced via the reigning institutions of the international order, as well as the processes and forces of globalization. A powerful and dynamic force in the MENA region, it casts doubt on the authenticity of Western-aligned governments and the motives of their leaders, and explicitly opposes the values they tacitly, if not unequivocally, support. As a force that threatens the viability of US-backed regimes by pitting exclusionary Islamist doctrines against the pluralist and egalitarian ethos of democratic governance, it has provoked mainly reactive responses from Washington. This has proven counterproductive, as (to cite a few glaring examples) America’s support of Israel and its wars on Gaza, its backing of the nepotistic and kleptocratic Saud monarchy, and its pursuit of its self-described “war on terror” has driven many young male Arabs into the arms of disparate Islamist groups. It has also further eroded the perceived legitimacy of US-backed governments among their domestic constituents in many nations of the region.13 The ideological underpinnings (drivers) of US foreign policy are formative of US policy makers’ shared notions of citizenship, civic and patriotic duties, the nation’s political legitimacy, self-determination and sovereignty, and the human rights and self-determination of people throughout the world. Beyond democracy promotion, the beliefs they propagate are expressed across disparate areas of activity pertinent to foreign policy, including neoliberal economic and development policy,

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

19

and humanitarian aid. The shared worldview of policy makers and international relations (IR) theorists is conditioned in accordance with a semantic– conceptual field that developed over centuries, and which enjoys the validity conferred by long historical precedence. Developing as, and evolving via discourse, this conceptual field becomes an ideological orientation that informs both informal normative practices and formally codified laws, which institutionalize and enforce it. It serves as the unconscious worldview or ideational orientation through which policy makers act and (conventional) IR theorists hypothesize. Generative of the attitudes, habits of thinking (group think), and expectations of leaders, policy makers, foreign policy bureaucracies, and IR theorists alike (across a broad range of inconsequential differences), this ideological orientation thoroughly prejudices the interpretation of events, in both conscious and unrecognized ways. This orientation is the source of their ideals and inspires the programs by which they endeavor to realize them. Unwitting ideologues, they earnestly strive to advance the aims that the discourses of their liberalist ideology compel, convinced they are doing good and improving the world. The consequences of this (and source of seeming contradiction between official rhetoric and policy) almost invariably include unforeseen cultural disruptions, increased political instability, and human insecurity and the immiseration of peoples. This, by extension, has numerous deleterious consequences for the US. Specifically, it fosters resentment, diminishes Washington’s credibility as an honest arbiter of the liberal values it espouses, and erodes America’s moral authority. Ultimately, it diminishes the perceived veracity of and confidence in international law (including principles such as state sovereignty and norms such as human rights). This weakens the central postwar institutions comprising the international order and the UN system. It also undercuts efforts to defend human rights – in other words: the very international order that arose, in part, to extend and ensure liberal norms closely related, if not identical to, the philosophical tenets of its own liberalist ideology. Insights from Lakoff and Johnson’s classic work on metaphor serve to illuminate the relevance of orientational and ontological metaphors constituting the ideological orientation that informs US foreign policy in the MENA region (and elsewhere).14 The same metaphors supply core concepts and the organizing framework for the international system, the post-WWII (Pax-Americana) world order. The aforementioned

20

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

conceptual field’s seeming coherence, and the corresponding political stance conferred by the liberalist ideological orientation arising therefrom, become ultimately reduced to value prejudices.15 Through the liberalist ideological orientation that this self-referential and self-rationalizing conceptual field (or notional framework) generates, individuals are habituated to its presuppositions – values that in time are imagined to objectively reflect reality. In the US, that “reality” corresponds with the dominant discursive lenses through which US foreign policy makers (across a number of departments and agencies) comprehend and respond to the diverse circumstances and challenges facing it and other nations. This is not to deny differences of emphases between departments of government or their rivalries for influence over the determination of policy (as, for instance, between the DOS and DOD); rather, it is to emphasize the undergirding ideological framework upon which they all always/already operate, and the given (i.e. constrained) spectrum of possible decisions that policy makers consider practically achievable. Nor is this to deny the capacity of US policy makers to account for some particulars and nuances distinguishing the leaders, governments, and societies of the nations with which they deal. Rather, as an ideological stance that mediates our shared comprehension of the world, the conceptual framework and corresponding discourses which it propagates always/already compel a relatively narrow spectrum of responses to issues and crises, according to the sense it makes of them. Finally, the same liberalist ideological orientation informs the policy stances of all the economically advanced democracies and of most developing nations, as well. The outliers are well-known to all, as are their (mis-)leaders.16 Just as that spectrum of response-options reflects the rationality of these discourses, mainstream liberal and conservative partisan approaches also fall well within that spectrum. Indeed, as centrist liberal and conservative parties and moderate politicians throughout the advanced democracies of the world share the same core liberal philosophical principles, parochial disputes between them, in particular domestic affairs, simply deflect from that fact and serve to further mask the operation of the ideological orientation that grounds and confers consistency to their thinking.17 The same ontological and orientational metaphors that inform the liberalist ideological orientation driving US foreign policy provide

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

21

seeming substance to the metaphysical conceits behind the key concepts in international relations theory and most, if not all, foreign policy (at least in the world’s “advanced democracies,” also referred to as the “international community”). These metaphors simultaneously shield from our view the metaphysical conceits implicit in those fundamental concepts. This “masking” procedure is abetted by the major conventional theories of international relations (IR), which take the reality of these metaphysical conceits for granted and thereby make their presumed “truth” ideological. Another result is the bestowal of epistemic privilege to the conceptual presuppositions of IR and authority to those who accept them, including policy makers. That epistemic privilege frames issues and validates or delegitimizes them accordingly. It defines in advance what questions, lines of inquiry, and policy responses are considered reasonable and permissible. Mainstream public understanding has advanced the ideological worldview this process propagates according to a narrow spectrum of largely consistent (social, or even partisan) interpretations. This is particularly evident in the advanced democracies.18 The interrelated concept and the practice of sovereignty animates the conceptual framework that substantiates the ideological stance, and gives rise to multiple ambiguities and tensions, particularly in relation to the disparate communities that comprise most modern states. This is particularly significant in the multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic MENA region, which contains some of the most diverse (least homogenous) nations in the world. Moreover, with a few exceptions,19 the modern nation states of the region were created20 or recreated21 by colonial European power without adequately accounting for the cultural differences and traditions, or the political interests of their constituent communities. This has proven most problematic in the heart of the Middle East, namely in Iraq and Syria, whose demographic cleavages are multiple and overlapping. Yet these antinomies of sovereignty are thought sufficiently resolved by some (conventional, mainly neorealist) IR scholars and many policy makers via the causal reduction of the two (concept and practice) to the acts of leaders and governments, and the great complexity this inadvertently elides or actively functions to conceal. This makes ideology itself, and any analysis of its affective force in foreign policy, easier to discount, which serves in part to mask its functioning.

22

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Lens analogies are useful here, as ideologues, who view the world through stridently biased perspectival lenses, are rarely aware of the ways in which their dogmatic attitudes are conditioned by it, let alone of how these further ramify their policy preferences. The ideologues’ perceptions of the world are always/already validated by their value prejudices. Seeing the world through the “lenses” of the liberalist ideological orientation ideological biases, they cannot but judge it accordingly. This partial discernment and constricted understanding of the world inhibits their comprehension of the other, impedes the reception of certain (contradictory) facts, limits consideration of possibly more efficacious policy alternatives, and ultimately exacerbates conflicts. Ideologies depend of course on the political ideals (conception of human nature, political aims, and a program for realizing them in practice) which produce them, but become sociopolitically dominant orientations when systematically reinforced by a metaphoricity of language that the ideology itself commends. Those metaphors habituate us to their reasonableness and hide in plain sight, eventually being taken as unquestionably sensible. Operating together they comprise an abstract system that provides coherence to the concepts governing our thought, including shared expectations and a common means of defining reality.22 The classical and neo- schools of Realism attempt to explain away ideology via anarchy and realpolitik or structure, respectively, and neoliberalism does so by appealing to the functioning of institutions and their generation of a supranational order of governance. However, thinkers identified with these schools of IR theory do not adequately interrogate the philosophical defensibility of the metaphysical conceits implicit within core concepts in the field, if they even acknowledge them (most do not). These concepts include anarchy, sovereignty, power, balance of power, national interest, interdependence, etc., the principal concepts of the discipline. It is not that many prominent scholars are simply uninterested in the crucial matter of their unwitting participation in what Foucault, influenced by Nietzsche, famously described as a power-knowledge regime, but that they cannot recognize that they are, and that they are resistant to such understanding when it threatens their confidence that what they are doing (their scholarship) has objective and apodictic veridicality.23 It is precisely that illusion upon which their authority (and careers) depend.

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

23

While he did not discuss the reigning regime in terms of ideology, Foucault, after Nietzsche’s elaboration of the role and function of the will to truth, gave an account of truth as a power-knowledge regime that augments my account of its functioning.24 Foucault observes: “The great [Western] myth needs to be dispelled [. . .] It is this myth which Nietzsche began to demolish by showing [. . .] that, behind all knowledge [savoir ], behind all attainment of knowledge [connaissance ], what is involved is a struggle for power. Political power is not absent from knowledge, it is woven together with it.”25 Of course truth grounds and validates knowledge. But its instantiation in an ideological orientation that interpellates subjects is what enables its mediation of social relations, making it authoritative and credible. Truth functioning as ideology simultaneously presupposes and entails various power relations, from control over its creation, to the extent of its affective force, the duration of its influence, the means of its deployment, and the mechanisms of enforcement established to sustain it. It should trouble us that so few scholars of IR give sustained attention to this subject – the formation of their own and their discipline’s notional prejudices – and prompt us to question their partiality, how the disciplinary framework occludes recognition of it, their mostly unconscious replication of those prejudices, and how it impugns their putative scholarly objectivity. Moreover, it is important to recognize the subtle ways in which such beliefs and preconceptions affect analyses of the crises that have roiled the MENA region over the last seven decades and hinder the resolution of ongoing conflicts there. Most exponents of the dominant theoretical perspectives in IR are ambivalent to their deeply ingrained biases, which may be explained by the fact that their own attitudes and beliefs impede them from recognizing the role of language (particularly metaphor) in concept formation, or of acknowledging the relation between uncritical usages of concepts in transmitting inbuilt metaphysical presuppositions upon which they work. This “blindness” is a function of ideology (specifically the hegemonic liberalist variety I specify here), which naturalizes its operation discursively (as aforementioned) and performatively. This is to say that scholars and policy makers alike engage in and enact their own habituation to the world that the metaphysical conceits animating their shared conceptual presuppositions advance. As their understanding is fundamentally prejudiced according to the same ideological biases formative of the subjects they study, the operation of the

24

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

reigning liberalist ideology in the development and validation of their knowledge is largely obscured. As a result many of them imagine that they objectively examine a world apart from themselves and propagate the biases formative of it. Among scholars within the IR discipline – particularly the “positivists” – this is particularly true, where (as in economics) empirics and quantitative analyses are mustered to give their research the appearance of objectivity, without any account of the profound generative roles of language or ideology that belie their assumptions of neutrality toward the subject they study. In the mid-1980s a few thinkers associated with less conventional schools of IR (e.g. postmodern, post-colonial, and feminist) began to interrogate certain of these metaphysical conceits – the presuppositions of the hegemonic liberalist ideology. In the last two decades critical perspectives limning those unexamined metaphysical assumptions have gained broader acceptance. Yet the mainstream of the discipline continues to maintain its privileged place, and these “outsider” perspectives are confined to areas of the scholarly community, without exerting any discernible effect on policy makers or the exercise of foreign policy. This multifaceted disposition combines human rights, democratic values, and Western ideals of bureaucratic efficiency to enact the strongly held and widely shared convictions throughout the US policy making and political establishment. This is also the case in each of the world’s advanced democracies. Yet the discursive rationality of the liberalist ideological orientation subtending US foreign policy sometimes generates conflicts between aspects of America’s policy aims, and contradictions in the implementation of its policies throughout the MENA region. The most obvious of these is, on one hand, the tension between Washington’s democracy promotion and support of human rights, and, on the other, its support of tyrannical regimes or ersatz democracies headed by dictators to maintain political stability. This conflict is illuminated by the simultaneous occurrence of both in some cases, including Egypt, where US aid – amounting to billions each year (most of it designated for the procurement of American arms) – maintained the corrupt regime of Hosni Mubarak for 29 years, while USAID concurrently spent a few million dollars each year promoting pluralist democratic principles and advocating corresponding institutional reform throughout the country.

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

25

A further complication generated by contradictions in Washington’s postwar foreign policy agenda (albeit a superficial one vis-a`-vis its ideological disposition) is its support of compliant tyrants. While its rationales for supporting autocrats and dictators differ according to the particular context of each case, Washington invariably gives its support of illiberal regimes a sanguine characterization and largely ignores criticism (e.g. Iran under the Shah, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before August 1990, Saudi Arabia since the end of WWII, etc.). Those rationales subvert America’s moral credibility and commitment to democratic ideals and self-determination, particularly when Washington deposes dictators when they have fallen out of favor with it (Iraq, 2003). The implications are similar when Washington pursues a rapprochement with equally onerous regimes it has opposed, when they agree to cooperate with its policy aims (Libya, 2003). Hannah Arendt famously noted the dynamic between totalitarian regimes and nontotalitarian regimes that, actively or otherwise, support them. She observed that people within (or under) both regimes engage in “wishful thinking and shirk reality in the face of real insanity,” and a “common-sense disinclination to believe the monstrous [. . .] constantly strengthened by the totalitarian regime.”26 These tendencies are ramified by the fantastical thinking that results from strident, enduring adherence to the liberalist ideological orientation that drives US foreign policy in the MENA region. Enacting its liberalist ideological stance, Washington has attempted to have it both ways in the MENA region. For example, it rhetorically postures as encouraging democratic reforms to foster greater political accountability and increase perceptions of institutional efficacy in nations throughout the region, while supporting highly illiberal regimes. In so doing it has aimed to (1) keep pressure, however slight, on illiberal regimes who use democratic procedures as window dressing, and (2) maintain stability within nations and across the region. The incongruent advocacy of democratization and material support for disparately authoritarian regimes finally became untenable in 2011 with the eruption of pro-democracy “Arab Spring” uprisings throughout the region. The Obama administration was caught off guard by these insurgencies, and US governmental agencies were incapable of adapting quickly enough to respond in a coherent manner. Consequently, American efforts were largely ineffective or even counterproductive. American actions have wreaked havoc in Iraq since 1991 and in Syria since 2011, exacerbating

26

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

the conflicts therein. Furthermore, when push came to shove and Washington was forced to choose between progressive reformers and illiberal governments it considered allies, it betrayed pro-democracy activists and democratic reformers in Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen. Moreover, fearful of the turmoil that would likely ensue if the Saud regime was toppled by domestic opponents, the US actively bolstered the Saudi monarchy, its dubious ally in Riyadh, which is the most tyrannical regime in the region. These examples would seem, prima facie, to cast doubt on the operation of liberalist ideological orientation animating US foreign policy, and to edify a conventional, realpolitik explanation of Washington’s foreign policy priorities, were it not for the strong advocacy of the American foreign policy establishment for democratization and the performative enactment of human rights norms with the aim of increasing economic prosperity and sociopolitical stability, which is its veritable mantra. Washington has worked to realize the aforementioned set of related, ideologically determined aims throughout the MENA region with varying degrees of earnestness and success.27 Yet those aims are often seen as window-dressing for more pragmatic realpolitik concerns. American officials and its policy making bureaucracies support democracy and human rights in theory, and when these ideals ensure the nation’s security and augment the nation’s power, understood both in economic and geostrategic terms, they support them in practice. However, Washington’s democratic constitutionalism – the principled basis of its democratic institutions and practices28 – provided for a representative, Republican form of governance in which most political decisions are determined at one or more removes from the direct involvement of the masses. It is therefore unsurprising that American elites find forms of quasi- or even illiberal rule acceptable that advocates of radical democracy reject as oppressive. In the MENA region Washington’s desire for political stability (a desire broadly shared by governing elites throughout the region) frequently supersedes its concern for the perceived legitimacy, let alone the liberality, of the regimes it supports.29 The insufficiently liberal and/or ersatz democracies created to safeguard America’s interests in the region have been guaranteed through the force of US military might. This contradiction between its liberal rhetoric and the realpolitik of its policies has increased perceptions of American capriciousness and cynicism.

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

27

This disposition corresponds, somewhat discordantly, with a normative deontological ethic and quasi-cosmopolitan stance, and takes form in the foreign policy doctrines of humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect (“R2P”), putatively in defense of human rights. Neither conservative nor liberal in the conventional partisan political sense, the liberalist ideological driver of US foreign policy transcends such parochial and superficial divisions. Partisan political debates only affect the ideological orientation at its margin, in the form of altered emphases given to short-term party-political agendas, the effects of which are exaggerated for similar benefit. A secondary consequence of partisan variations on the ideology’s central premises is that they deflect many observers from the ideology’s continual operation. In this important sense the liberalist ideology driving US foreign policy comprises an ideological stance, that arose from a sense of moral mission that existed in evolving form since the nation’s founding.

The Liberalist Ideological Orientation and the MENA Region The US’s victory over fascism in WWII galvanized this sense of moral mission and the liberalist ideological stance that, while evolving over the proceeding seven decades, has dominated since. However, that ideological stance has not developed in such a way as to give that mission greater notional coherence. Rather, its evolution via policy compromises has made its contradictions more explicitly evident. Despite gradually losing credibility as the years passed, America’s liberalist ideological stance was among its biggest “exports” throughout the Cold War and was seemingly revalidated by the defeat of communism and collapse of the Soviet Union at its end.30 Since WWII it has informed perceptions and assessments of America’s view of its role – or “duty” – in the world, its national security, its foreign policy interests, and its aspirations for the world. It is an inextricable part of the American psyche and identity. Significantly, US foreign policy has also influenced domestic politics within the nations of the MENA region and their relations with each other, notably the historic rivalry and ongoing proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The ideological drivers of Washington’s longterm policy goals have modified legal practices, promoted pluralism,

28

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

minority enfranchisement, and human rights, and compelled more transparent and accountable institutional practices and liberalized trade. Conversely, the US is criticized both for failing to demand reform consistently enough, and for acting in contradictory ways that enable tyrants to abuse their subjects. The promotion of democratic practices, pluralism, transparency and accountability, and human rights comes after more pragmatic priorities, such as ensuring regional stability and supporting allied regimes. By Washington’s lights this includes sustaining America’s military presence and maintaining the operation of extractive industries and the uninterrupted exportation of oil and gas, where relevant. These higher priorities inevitably impair Washington’s democracy promotion efforts, a schizophrenic situation that muddles its relations with regimes in the region and casts doubt on the genuineness of its commitment to liberal philosophical ideals. Indeed, Saudi Arabia, one of Washington’s strongest allies, regularly flouts international law in the area of human rights, with little to no objections from the US. Yet, despite this the US sells Riyadh billions of dollars-worth of high-tech weaponry every year on the pretext of preserving security. The aforementioned rivalry between Shi’ite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia (which has succeeded more populous Egypt and more secular Turkey as the leader of the Sunni-Muslim world) has been further exacerbated by US efforts to weaken, constrain, and isolate Iran. Over the last three decades Tehran increased its sponsorship of proxies (Hezbollah, etc.), allegedly fomented Shi’ite insurgencies in Sunni-ruled nations such as Kuwait, Bahrain, and northeastern Saudi Arabia itself, and sought to develop weapons of mass destruction. US actions raised tensions in the region and intensified the cold war between Tehran and Riyadh, which aggravated and internationalized civil wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. As a programmatic extension of its liberalist ideology, human rights have been a rhetorical driver, if not a key piece, of US foreign policy over the last seven decades that, however cynically applied in practice, have figured prominently in the central paradox of its foreign policy. In the MENA region this has in part meant that authoritarian regimes and tyrants supported by the US and its allies have largely been insulated from Western criticism over their human rights violations. Numerous examples illustrate this and the counterproductive consequences this has had for the US in the region, and beyond it. The regular use of violence

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

29

and murder by the Shah of Iran’s notorious secret police, the SAVAK, hatred of which contributed to the Shah’s ouster, was largely ignored by Washington.31 Saudi Arabia is one of the most repressive governments in the world today, and regularly commits egregious violations of international human rights law, which its ally, the US, largely ignores even as it condemns Iran. The “Arab Spring” was a paroxysm of long-developing political discontent that ousted three, and arguably four, governments across the MENA region in 2011.32 These tumultuous events were characterized in reductive, optimistic terms by major Western news media, and those depictions, combined with official responses from the US and other Western governments, generated the overly-sanguine narrative that a liberatory movement was underway.33 The role of social media in facilitating the uprisings was much ballyhooed, and generated a great deal of enthusiastic noise about the effects of new communications technologies and social media (including scholarship published in very short order), but the actual transformative effect of these innovations is as yet unclear. Moreover, the effects of these technologies and social media platforms increasingly appear more complicated (and potentially counterproductive to the aims of reformers) than the overly sanguine characterizations initially portrayed them. The “Arab Spring” uprisings originated not only in dissatisfaction with oppressive autocracies but in the increasing tension between statist identities – as commended by the state and given coherence by its enforced interiority (versus the outside, that which is exterior to and demarcated as foreign to it) – and the transnational disruption of statist identity caused by the expansion of democratic values propagated via the liberalist institutional complex and the processes of globalization. These restrictive statist identities draw upon differing ontological commitments than the cosmopolitan democratic identities that disrupt them do. In the case of the former, they were generated and discursively perpetuated via myriad interrelated and mutually ramifying sources, including (importantly) key concepts in IR that operate at both the highest levels of theorizing and in common understandings of the political, including the popular imagination, e.g. anarchy, sovereignty, self-determination, patriotism, duty, etc. These have been dominant throughout the MENA region since modern states were created there from European colonial territories. (That process notoriously excluded

30

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

the input of the populations concerned and ignored ethno-national constituencies and boundaries insofar as they would condition the political viability of those states.) The agonism and dynamism of identity and corresponding perceptions of political legitimacy comprise an interrelated domain of discourse. Both are mediated and given substance by culturally specific norms and practices, which are simultaneously authorized and constrained by the state. Identity, in its multitudinous expressions, is at once continuously contested by individuals and inhibited by strong sociocultural and political incentives to conform to traditions and customs. The state’s primary interest in identity is the continuity of the state through the institutions and persons comprising it. The “reduction” of opportunities for becoming, the circumscription of identity to a number of determinate “ideal” types, and the sense of collective identity and belonging that results, is achieved by way of the ontological commitments promoted by the state through institutional practices such as education, military service, the bureaucracy, etc. Belief in determinate identity is a key factor in the perpetuation of status-quo power relations throughout any society. The individuals comprising the state come, to varying degrees, to be just as invested in the state’s preservation as the state is in promoting the forms of life that comprise and validate it. Conversely, the liberal, egalitarian, humanistic dimensions of the liberalist ideological discourse and the ontological commitments it advances gradually subverted the identic categories authorized by the states of the region. While this occurred, the hopes of ever more diverse, sophisticated and worldly populations increased, further eroding perceptions of those states’ institutional efficacy and the authority of their leaders. That is to say: belief in the necessity of determinate identity, and the aforementioned privileged identities or “ideal” types, waned. With more varied socialization, possibilities for nontraditional associations and hybrid, indeterminate identities arose. Foreign influences and the appeal of disparate cultures extended beyond capital cities to penetrate provincial towns and rural villages (via the internet, social media, etc.) quickly changing expectations, particularly among the youth. The dissentious effects of this development gradually increased demands for liberalizing social and political reform, which was perceived by establishment institutions as further compromising the power of the state.

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

31

The rejection of these demands generated a volatile situation in which insurrection became inevitable. This is particularly evident in social crises that challenge the hegemonic power of these states’ over their respective societies. The “Arab Spring” was, in significant part, a series of instances of transnational identity exceeding the insular, determinate ontological commitments permitted by and within (nominally) “sovereign” states, which simultaneously revealed the sclerotic incapacity of those states to adapt. According to the terms of statist logic that had long supplied their political legitimacy, these events compelled moribund regimes to employ extralegal tactics to preserve themselves. Sooner or later this took the form of violent repression in nearly every case. With the notable exception of Tunisia (whose leader fled), the “Arab Spring” uprisings demonstrated the propensity of statist regimes to fall back on repressive forms of control as an illiberal means of regime selflegitimization and re-legitimization (e.g. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, et al.). This was also the case in Libya, Syria, and Yemen at various points preceding their respective collapses into chaos and civil war. The result of the “Arab Spring” uprisings has on balance been increased repression, violent conflict, and chaos throughout the region. Sadly, even Tunisia’s democratic gains are threatened by extremism – that nation’s political reforms and elections having been the sole success story from the historic episode.34 This is not to assert that nothing positive occurred (Tunisia remains a beacon of hope), but the optimism that generated the misnomer “Arab Spring” was premature and overly sanguine. The “Arab Winter” characterization that replaced it as disorder emerged (in Libya, Yemen, and Syria) and repressive totalitarianism returned (as in Egypt) or was reasserted with greater severity (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Daeshoccupied Syria and Iraq) is similarly inaccurate. In some countries (e.g. Algeria, Bahrain) the uprisings were lacking both in intellectual leadership and coherent and programmatic political demands, dooming them to collapse back upon, or turn on, themselves. In others (Egypt, Syria, Yemen), where that lack of leadership and political coherency may also have dissipated the political viability of movements, demonstrations were also hijacked by government factions, Islamists, foreign agents, or some combination of these. These actors channeled the anger of protestors into support of their own aims, factionalizing protestors and thwarting their nascent movements prospects for success.

32

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Governments generally responded with repressive tactics and sought to thwart the democratic demands of their resisters, with the exceptions of Tunisia and Egypt. The former’s president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, resigned and fled the country, while the latter’s president, Hosni Mubarak, was toppled and tried. Those two revolutions were, initially at least, successful. Tunisia’s cohered with America’s policy aims in the MENA region over the last seven decades, while Egypt’s was troubling. For while a democratic ethos drove it, it gave rise to an elected government (Egypt’s first) led by the Muslim Brotherhood, a somewhat radical Sunni party opposed by both Israel and Saudi Arabia. The 2013 coup d’e´tat and massacre in Egypt led by the dictator al-Sisi, which ousted Mohamed Morsi, was – contra Washington’s ideals – more to its liking.35 That policy can be summarized as backing for compliant dictators coupled with rhetorical support for democratic liberalization. US-backed governments in Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, and particularly Saudi Arabia, have some of the worst human rights records in the world.36 Yet Washington vehemently decries violations no more offensive by regimes it opposes and appeals to their alleged human rights violations as a pretext to wage war against and to topple them.37 This has the effect of politicizing and undercutting the perceived efficacy of those international human rights laws, as well as international law generally. US wars allegedly undertaken in defense of human rights (or in which the defense of human rights has been invoked as a grounds for just war), including the US-led NATO air war on rump-Yugoslavia in 1999 and its invasion of Iraq in 2003, violated fundamental precepts of international law.38 The effects of these abuses by the world’s only superpower include similarly cynical appeals by other governments seeking to justify illegal aggressions (e.g. Russia’s 1998 invasion of Georgia over South Ossetia), and diminished confidence in the postwar international institutions created to guarantee human rights. The main consequence is an erosion of the order and stability provided by international law. Consistent with its liberalist ideological orientation, the US government wields the discourses of liberal values and human rights, and engages in “democracy promotion” and “humanitarian intervention” in a manipulative, even quasi-colonialist way.39 As a former (and arguably current) colonial power, this consists with Washington’s history and identity as a great power. It also consists with the liberalist discourses of

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

33

rationalism, universalism, and progressivism, which are taken to correspond with the intrinsic advantages of democratic governance. The US has consistently pursued the liberal values of democratization and human rights throughout the Middle East and elsewhere since (at least) the latter half of the Truman administration and the adoption of both NSC 68 and the Nitze doctrine.40 The Truman Doctrine enunciated the position that would serve as the basis for US foreign policy and prompt its interventions throughout the Cold War. In an anti-Communist speech informed by liberalist ideological conceits, Truman summarized the disposition, if not some of the principles informing the doctrine, before a joint session of Congress on March 12, 1947: At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures [. . .] that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way [. . .] that our help should be primarily through economic stability and orderly political process. The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration.41 This anti-Communist doctrine served to advance Washington’s realpolitik foreign policy posture and ideological goals simultaneously. It provided rhetorical justification for US interventions in numerous unrelated crises throughout the decades that followed.42 Since WWII, the US government has consistently invoked the rhetoric of liberal values, human rights, and democracy promotion to

34

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

realize its policy aims, which is to say: it has rhetorically appealed to the ideological drivers that have long compelled its foreign policy. As well as giving humanitarian names to military campaigns to fortify perceptions of its moral authority, Washington has fused its foreign policy aims with public relations stratagems to advance its broad geostrategic purposes since the early eighties (and arguably since Vietnam). Framing interventions as benevolent, it has pressured allies and challengers using a combination of liberalist ideological discourses supported by both soft and tougher incentives (force short of war) to compel compliance, and to preserve and extend its power. Now it is working to create a new norm dubbed “responsibility to protect (R2P)”, which, aside from being a direct assault on the principle of state sovereignty, operates as a means of justifying interventions in the domestic affairs of states against governments that the “international community” (itself a rhetorical conceit invoked by Western/Atlantic powers), meaning the US and its allies, seek to topple. R2P is a piece of a broader agenda to fundamentally reorder international relations (IR) norms so as to alter the system itself.43 The apparent political hypocrisy of R2P’s application in practice is prima facie illustrated, but on deeper analysis belied by its invocation in the case of Libya’s (internationalized) civil war in 2011, but not explicitly in Bahrain’s. R2P is revealed as a rhetorical and legal tool for rationalizing intervention where desirable; any seeming ideological inconsistency in Washington’s disparate application of such humanitarian principles to justify its policy responses is disproven by the cynical ethos of realpolitik actually driving its policy objectives in all such cases.44 Washington’s ideologically driven policy aims in the MENA region have paradoxically included support for dictators and illiberal presidents-for-life.45 Alternately rationalized as (1) a means of preserving the domestic stability of these states, and (2) the pragmatic result of its reluctant acceptance of an unfortunate reality (the domestic political situation within these sovereign, self-determining nation states into which Washington could not legitimately intercede), this support retarded domestic reform, inhibited democratization, and augmented repressive tactics by cronyist, autocratic regimes in these countries. It amounted to an extension of the policies pursued by colonial European powers (America’s allies) in the region, as nations in the region attained sovereign independence in the decades following WWII. This support of

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

35

tyrants exhibited deep contradictions in Washington’s (non-)application of liberal principles in the wake of policies that had been essentially racist and imperialist. In the MENA region this took on its current character roughly in the period between the toppling of Mosaddegh and installation of the Shah in Iran (1953) and the accession of Sadat to president in Egypt in 1970, which marked the end of Nasserite Arab nationalism. The oil crisis of 1973, which dramatically enriched the region’s oil states, reinvigorated Washington’s support of cooperative dictators. In the same period the Persian Gulf emirates of Kuwait (1961), Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE (all in 1971) declared their independence from the UK. The US policy orientation toward the MENA region, considered at the macro level, has undergone two major shifts in the proceeding four decades. Two events moderately affected but did not fundamentally alter this order. They were the Washington-brokered Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978 and the Iranian revolution in 1979. The former event inaugurated a gradual transformation in the posture of much of the Arab world toward Israel and eased cooperation between the Arab world and the US (Israel’s principal sponsor). The latter compelled Washington to transfer its primary geopolitical alliance in the strategic Persian Gulf region from Tehran to Riyadh. Less recognized but arguably more profound was the policy shift formalized 19 years later in the Iraq Liberation Act (1998). This legislation was the product of, among other things, the changed disposition in Washington with regard to the use of force in the MENA region following (1) its success expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, and (2) seven years of aggravation generated by efforts to oust the regime of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. This had entailed fruitless weapons inspections and the enforcement of the UN disarmament program and no-fly zones.46 While the Gulf War was conducted to expel Iraqi forces illegally occupying Kuwait, it had not envisaged regime change in Iraq, which would have violated international law and hindered the UN’s authorization of military force.47 Following the Gulf War, Washington grew increasingly fixated by the effort to oust Saddam Hussein throughout the 1990s. Signed into law by then President Clinton, the Iraq Liberation Act institutionalized Washington’s resolve to topple the Iraqi regime and signaled a policy shift that, it could reasonably be surmised, would apply equally to similar regimes. The act

36

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

authorized the president to disburse aid designated as “humanitarian assistance” to (from section 5-c): (1) include a broad spectrum of Iraqi individuals, groups, or both, opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime; and (2) [which are] are committed to democratic values, to respect for human rights, to peaceful relations with Iraq’s neighbors, to maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity, and to fostering cooperation among democratic opponents of the Saddam Hussein regime.48 The toppling of Saddam Hussein, like America’s efforts to annihilate the Taliban in Afghanistan and to depose Syria’s Bashar al-Assad little more than a decade later, was couched in rhetorical appeals to defend human rights and facilitate the self-determination of peoples against an illiberal, brutal tyrant, in accordance with the ideological orientation that also validated the international community’s “containment” strategy.49 In section 6 of the act, appeals to international law are made with the aim of punishing leading members of the Iraqi regime. The authors call for “the President to call upon the United Nations to establish an international criminal tribunal for the purpose of indicting, prosecuting, and imprisoning Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi officials who are responsible for crimes against humanity, genocide, and other criminal violations of international law.”50 The effectiveness of such rhetorical ploys in justifying aggressive regime change as an explicit foreign policy goal lies precisely in the difficulty of challenging them. No one could credibly argue that Saddam Hussein was not a brutal and repressive dictator, but objections made by way of comparisons with the apparently acceptable behavior of equally brutal and repressive US allies (e.g. Saudi Arabia, the Shah’s Iran) were rarely made, and were dismissed by US administrations or repudiated by pundits when advanced. Arguments that such intervention violated key principles and explicit rules codified in international law were countered with appeals to international human rights law, the alleged greater pertinence of which was already assumed in the language of the Iraq Liberation Act itself. Nevertheless, the rarity of such objections demonstrates well the hegemony of the governing liberalist ideological orientation and the resultant “complicity” of major American media organizations with the country’s policy makers. Washington’s cynical

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

37

and deceptive invocations of liberal principles (under the guise of human rights) to rationalize toppling the legitimate government of a sovereign nation state won the day. The shift in America’s chief alliance from pre-revolution Iran to Saudi Arabia was undertaken out of pragmatic necessity, but such solutions to practical needs almost invariably derive from the dominant ideological orientation that conditions perceptions of what is desired and acceptable. When Shi’ite fundamentalism toppled the Shah, and then expelled the US – his main sponsor from Iran – it was automatically condemned by the terms of Washington’s liberalist ideological stance as religious extremism and a theocratic dictatorship. And while the government of Saudi Arabia fulfilled the same negative criteria, Washington’s immediate geopolitical need for a new partner in the Persian Gulf made a strengthened alliance with Riyadh pragmatically useful. As Saudi Arabia was significantly less developed and backward than Iran at the time, King Khalid welcomed Washington’s increased support, as it promised to accelerate the nation’s domestic growth, boost its international clout, and ensure against Iranian aggression in defence of the oppressed Shia population of the northeastern region of the eastern province, especially feared following the Qatif uprising. Previously oriented toward the UK – like the rest of the Gulf emirates – such an alliance assured Washington a continued presence in the region and enabled it to contain the radicalism of the Ayatollah and deter Soviet adventurism. Concern with containing Iran’s influence and mutual cooperation for development would spur the creation of the GCC a few years later (1981). With regard to the MENA region, the Cold War fear of Soviet expansion – the driving force of Washington’s containment policy – was exacerbated by Moscow’s largely misunderstood invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and spurred America’s desire to ally itself with Saudi Arabia. Soviet fears of a militant Islamic insurgency spreading across its Central Asian Republics, and the toppling of its client regime in Kabul, prompted its intervention. Washington, which did not yet adequately appreciate the threat of militant Islamism, intensified its cooperation with the corrupt junta of General Zia then ruling Pakistan, forged a close alliance with Riyadh, and gave clandestine support to the Mujahideen fighters in southeastern Afghanistan. While in accordance with its liberalist ideological orientation, these actions were

38

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

symptomatic of an inability to correctly adduce the sources of its adversary’s motives and aims. This led to a misidentification of America’s own best interests by analysts and policy makers, and a series of counterproductive responses that, for instance, inadvertently cultivated the precursors of the Taliban movement and Al Qaeda. These effects incontrovertibly exacerbated instability throughout the region and the world.

Conclusion There is a dual paradox to US foreign policy in the MENA region. First, there is a paradox in the liberalist ideological orientation that naturalizes the discourses validating Washington’s policy goals, which blinds both policy makers and many pundits and scholars of international relations to its functioning. Second, there is a paradox in Washington’s pursuit of liberal policy goals (corresponding with those discourses) by illiberal means, including material support for authoritarian and despotic regimes. This generates a tension that fuels extremism across the MENA region, including militant forms of Islamism that expressly reject and actively oppose the philosophical tenets of post-Enlightenment and post-industrial liberal-modernity, which informs the hegemonic liberalist ideology dominant throughout the advanced democracies and highly developed economies of the world. There is also an internal contradiction to the ideological stance itself, insofar as the (neoliberal) economic thrust of it undercuts its democratic-egalitarian dimension. Consequently, social and political instability will persist and likely intensify as economic inequality increases until Washington – in coordination with the governments of the region – implements a set of policies consistent with its ideological aims and supports liberalizing reforms, rather than privileging security concerns that perpetuate the status quo (illiberal, autocratic, and tyrannical regimes). Development is obviously crucial to the success of such reforms. However, many political and religious leaders and most of the people in the developing nations of the MENA region do not share the liberalist ideological orientation that prevails within the “international community.” Though all of the region’s political leaders are familiar with the institutional apparatus it has generated since WWII (e.g. the United Nations, etc.), and many of the latter desire to see the values it

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

39

advances realized in their societies, regionally powerful governments and influential regional IGOs explicitly reject some of its key principles and norms.51 Specifically, the inalienable individual freedoms and corresponding civil rights that constitute the substantive institutional core of the liberalist ideological orientation are systematically denied the citizens of the majority of MENA region states.52 Moreover, powerful IGOs – pillars of the post-WWII international order – such as the IMF and World Bank have come to be seen by many as exacerbating the region’s economic woes and its subordination to the West through their loans, development strategies, and structural adjustment programs.53 Among its average, unwitting practitioners and the ideologues who act as its conscious proponents, the liberalist ideological orientation compels an ahistorical worldview that denies the relevance of culture to sociopolitical norms and rights to advance political authority and civil liberties according to faith in universal, abstract reason. This simultaneously generates, on the one hand, a naı¨ve meliorism, that results on the other, in a cynical form of realism. In the former case (meliorism) it commends the promotion of the rule of law, respect for human rights, and democratic governance, ideals which sound prima facie desirable, but are achieved via the destruction of the autochthonous culture and indigenous values and norms. In the latter case (cynical realism) it entrenches the perceived need to defend tyrannical ally regimes in the name of ensuring political stability, including the preservation of limited liberal (Western) institutional reforms – however meager – that have already been achieved.54 This paradox – the illiberal imposition of liberal-modern foreign values – will continue to roil societies throughout the MENA region as long as expectations of the people are raised while the highly repressive status quo continues to be enforced in the name of maintaining stability.55 The leading democracies of the developed world should insist upon and materially assist the internal reform of tyrannical ally states in the region to advance (make good on) the ideals commended by the hegemonic liberalist ideological orientation, or risk ever-diminishing confidence in the values it advances. This undesirable trend could be expected to bring with it the furtherance of illiberal regimes, the rise of more repressive populist demagogues, and more and protracted ethnosectarian conflicts across the MENA region, and beyond.

40

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Notes 1. The notional bases of the hegemonic liberalist ideology (of which the US is a chief exponent) are to be found in post-Enlightenment liberal thought, the social and political transformations wrought by the industrial revolution, the manifold horrors of the World Wars, along with the decolonization movement and the rise of technology-driven globalization. The reigning liberalist ideology’s principal discourses are developments of Enlightenment values, discursively developed. These include the precepts of universalism, rationalism, humanism, secularism, and progressivism (See Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 7th edn (New York: Pearson, 2009, p. 193)), from which the related discursive “out-growths” of egalitarianism, meliorism, and scientism have emerged. Ubiquitous throughout the Western world, these discourses have been codified in the liberal constitutional and human rights norms that since the promulgation of the US Constitution have come to be understood as legal norms. Collectively these comprise the hegemonic liberalist ideological orientation. They are reproduced directly and circulated reflexively via powerful ontological and orientational metaphors that habituate and naturalize “subjects” to the international system and its privileged unit, the nation state. 2. By “liberalist ideology” I refer to the foundational philosophical principles and conceptual conceits that “ground” accepted discourses out of (or against) which conventional ideological distinctions emerge, and on the bases of which much partisan political debate occurs. The “liberalist ideological” stance or orientation that prevails throughout the Western, Anglo-European cultural realm (and to different degrees and extents effectively conditions the politics of its former empires’ colonies) entails the range of mainstream partisan liberal and conservative principles. This is, obviously, unrecognized by fervent partisan ideologues, but it is also not sufficiently appreciated by many analysts and critics of politics and foreign policy. Conversely, extreme nationalist and doctrinaire Communist ideological positions lie outside of, and stand in opposition to, this orientation. 3. The hegemonic ideological orientation to which I refer is “liberalist” insofar as it entails post-Enlightenment values codified in the founding documents of many Western democratic republics (e.g. the US Declaration, Preamble, and Bill of Rights, as well as in France’s De´claration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, etc.). These documents elaborated and advanced the aims of the liberalist ideology, which entails both the mainstream “liberal conservative” and “liberal” partisan political interpretations of those post-Enlightenment philosophical values and the goals they further. There is, of course, room for disagreement about what precise political form or expression such a philosophical and inextricably related ideological orientation should take, but America’s fundamental ideological orientation has persisted in virtually the same mode since the end of WWII. 4. For example, South Korea (ROK).

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

41

5. “The United States stands for a set of universal rights, including the freedom of expression and assembly, and believes that governments, including the Syrian government, must address the legitimate aspirations of their people,” White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, responding to reports of the deaths of three demonstrators in Syria following efforts by Damascus to restrain the protests. See: Caren Bohan, “U.S. and U.N. condemn attacks on protesters in Syria,” Reuters, March 18, 2011. Available at http:// www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-protest-usa-idUSTRE72H8BR20110318 (accessed October 28, 2015.) 6. The few wealthy MENA region nations that enjoy a high ranking on the human development index (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait) are outliers with regard to their resistance to the hegemonic liberalist ideology. They have undeniably been transformed by it, however. The UN Human Development report, which contains the referenced index, exemplifies the ethos of the hegemonic liberalist ideology. See United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2015 (New York, United Nations Development Programme, 2015). Available at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2015_hum an_development_report.pdf; and see the indexes themselves at http://hdr.undp. org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi (accessed February 26, 2017). 7. In cases of earnest democracy promotion consistent with the tenets of its liberalist ideology (e.g. Turkey following the 1971 and 1980 coup d’e´tats, the constitution of 1982, and restoration of democracy in 1983), the US frequently links its foreign aid to liberalizing reforms. It simultaneously condemns abuses, and calls for and funds reform efforts and educational campaigns, among other things. In cases illustrating a perceived divergence between the rhetoric consistent with its human rights advocacy and its realpolitik policies, Washington’s rhetoric has been criticized as a means of deflecting attention from its material support for authoritarian dictatorships and its alleged indifference to their rights abuses, corruption, lack of transparency, and systematic oppression of domestic opposition parties and groups. 8. Michael Freeden has explicated the relation of ideology in theory to practice, asserting that, “First, ideologies are themselves political thought practices and as such have distinct features. Second, ideologies as a group contain a specific category of thought-practice pertaining to understanding the relationship between theory and practice. Third, each of the major ideologies displays different interpretations of the relationship between theory and practice” (239). He goes on to observe that, “ideologies are particular configurations of the actual and attainable meanings of political concepts” (240). Michael Freeden, Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 9. Malcom B. Hamilton, “The elements of the concept of ideology,” Political Studies 35/1 (1987), pp. 18– 38. 10. See Hobsbawm’s introduction “Inventing traditions” and his essay “Massproducing traditions: Europe: 1870 – 1914,” in E. J. Hobsbawm and

42

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Counter-Enlightenment and traditionalist brands of conservatism cannot be included in the liberalist ideological orientation informing international relations, as they oppose certain of its key discourses. This does not minimize the diversity of thought or ideological variations between disparate Islamist groups. What they share in common (the primacy of Islam and the Koran, a rejection of secular governance, belief in the universal validity of their vision (i.e. universalism)) is far more unifying than their respective differences are distinguishing, which is in part why conservative Islamism appeals across the Arab-Islamic cultural realm, and why reactionarymilitant strains hold as much appeal as they do. The literature on political Islam and Islamism is extensive. See Kylie Baxter and Shahram Akbarzadeh, U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: the Roots of AntiAmericanism (London: Routledge, 2008), and Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005), among a plethora of sources. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). These value prejudices are formative of political knowledge and are taken for the transcendent good. Collectively they comprise what is taken for acceptable norms of governance and policy. These include, prima facie, the Kim regime in North Korea, Russia’s Putin, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, and many regimes and leaders throughout the MENA region, particularly the Sauds, Syria’s Assad, Egypt’s al-Sisi, Bahrain’s Khalifas, Qatar’s al-Thanis, Kuwait’s Sabahs, and (arguably) to a lesser extent, the governments of Turkey and the UAE. The theocratic government of Iran is also highly illiberal, and the (now) Shi’ite-dominated government of Iraq struggles to fulfill the values instantiated by its constitution. Proponents of radical or extreme ideologies, such as communists and fascists, obviously do not share these liberal presuppositions and actively oppose them. However, among the advanced democracies, which is to say within the “international community,” there are currently no such parties in control of governments or which seriously affect international relations. Leaders or governments that challenge the discourses generated by the reigning conceptual framework provided by the liberalist ideological orientation are gradually isolated and opposed. The ideological spectrum presented by newspapers provides a telling example (ranging from conservative to liberal in each case): in the US: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post; in the UK: The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, the Guardian; in France: Le Figaro, Libe´ration, Le Monde and L’Humanite´; in Germany: Die Welt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung; in Japan: Yomiuri, Mainichi, Asahi, etc. While there is certainly a range of partisan ideological perspectives represented in each of the aforementioned sets of

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

43

newspapers, all share the key liberal-modern (“liberalist”) ideological presuppositions – the philosophical tenets – that drive the corresponding orientation. Radical newspapers in each of these nations have remained relatively obscure by comparison. With low circulation rates, they exercise little discernible effect on public policy and are only capable of transforming statusquo discourses (which are themselves resilient and resistant to challenges) at the margins. National television news programs are arguably even more “uniform” in ideological terms. In the Anglophone world, conservative tabloids have influenced attitudes by sowing reaction, albeit not in ways that meaningfully challenge the dominant ideological orientation. For example, Turkey and Oman, though Turkey was created as a modern nationstate, whilst Oman has evolved into one. For example, the Arab states of North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf emirates, and Saudi Arabia. For example, Egypt and Iran, both of which were colonized by European powers under different circumstances and had modern state political institutions and bureaucracies imposed upon them. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, p. 3. In an unpublished essay from 1873, “On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense,” Nietzsche eloquently and incisively observed, “What then is truth? A mobile host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and embellishment, and which, after long usage, strike a people as fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions, metaphors which are worn out by frequent use and drained of sensuous power, coins which, having lost their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer as coins.” Foucault famously conceived this as a “power-knowledge regime” and the uses of it in terms of “governmentality.” Michel Foucault, “Truth and juridical forms,” in P. Rabinow (ed.), Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Volume 3 (New York: The New Press, 2000). Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1976), p. 437. Again, regarding the salience of ideology to political practice, Freeden has observed that “[A]ll political practices are a crystallization of norms, values, and interpretations that at least partly account for action-choices, though they are not themselves coterminous with action” (240). And he further notes that, “To conceive of an ideology as a practice is both to embed it in an historical setting, and to internalize history as a necessary dimension of ideology” (242). Freeden, Liberal Languages, pp. 240, 42. Liberal constitutionalism refers to the institutional codification and guarantee of inalienable (civil) rights, checks and balances, and separation of powers as the necessary bases of rule of law and legitimate government. The differences between the domestic perceptions of a government’s efficacy, and perceptions of it in the broader region or the international community,

44

30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

are difficult and sometimes impossible for policy makers to account for in practice, so are often dismissed as too messy. Regarding domestic perceptions, it is often easier to deal with (and thereby tacitly support) a government with low or ambiguous levels of domestic support (e.g. Gaddafi’s Libya, following the 2003 nuclear deal) than it is to risk increasing tension by demanding that it undertake liberalizing reforms. A related matter is how US policy helps to massage domestic perceptions of governments allied with Washington with poor human rights records or oppressive internal policies (e.g. Egypt under Mubarak, and Saudi Arabia (throughout its existence)). America’s liberalist ideology automatically resonated with its Anglophone allies (which already shared its fundamental assumptions), but it transformed the dispositions of peoples throughout northwestern Europe and Japan, a development that culminated in the ideological apparatus (the institutions, forces, and processes) driving contemporary globalization. See Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 139. Also see William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride (New York: Touchstone, 1988), p. 127. The governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya fell as a result of demonstrations, and the government of Yemen was effectively replaced. This general misperception seemed valid at the time given the flight of Tunisia’s ruling family and the resignation of Egypt’s Mubarak. See: Patrick Markey and Tarek Amara, “Homegrown jihadists with Libya ties target Tunisia’s democracy,” Reuters, July 7, 2015. Available at http://www. reuters.com/article/us-tunisia-security-idUSKCN0PH22I20150707 (accessed February 26, 2017); Fadil Aliriza, “Why counterterrorism could be the death of Tunisian democracy,” Foreign Policy, December 30, 2015. Available at http:// foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/30/why-counterterrorism-could-be-the-death-oftunisian-democracy/ (accessed February 26, 2017). See Emad Mekay, “Exclusive: US bankrolled anti-Morsi activists,” Al Jazeera, July 10, 2013. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/ 07/2013710113522489801.html (accessed February 26, 2017). The al-Sisi coup and the anti-Morsi protests preceding it were also provided substantial material support by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. See David Hearst, “Why Saudi Arabia is taking a risk by backing the Egyptian coup,” Guardian, August 20, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/20/s audi-arabia-coup-egypt; and David K. Kirkpatrick, “Recordings suggest Emirates and Egyptian military pushed ousting of Morsi,” New York Times, March 1, 2015. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/world/mi ddleeast/recordings-suggest-emirates-and-egyptian-military-pushed-oustingof-morsi.html?_r¼1 (accessed February 26, 2017). See Human Rights Watch, “World report 2015: Saudi Arabia.” Available at https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/saudi-arabia (accessed February 26, 2017).

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

45

37. The rhetoric of the current and recent US administrations pertaining to the human rights records of Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq and the Assad government in Syria illustrate this point. 38. This included the principles of the inviolability of territorial sovereignty and self-determination, as a stated purpose of the Yugoslav campaign was to expel federal Yugoslavian forces from Kosovo (which was then converted into a nominally independent statelet), and in the Iraq War to oust the government of Saddam Hussein. In the case of Iraq this was particularly ironic, as the US had led the international coalition in 1990– 1 to oust Iraq from Kuwait, which it had illegally invaded. Alleged Iraqi violations of the human rights of Kuwaitis was highlighted in Congressional hearings before the war to increase American public support for the Gulf War. 39. There is a plethora of scholarship on this subject. For unintentional insights into this ideological agenda, see Melinda Haring, “Can Washington stop doing dumb democracy promotion, please?”, Foreign Policy, December 15, 2015. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/15/can-washington-stop-doingdumb-democracy-promotion-please-usaid/ (accessed February 26, 2017). 40. Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), p. 118. 41. President Truman to a joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947. See http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp (accessed February 26, 2017). 42. This included the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states, including Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Laos (1964 –73), Chile (1973), and Nicaragua (1982 –5), where Washington conspired to topple regimes it saw as threatening its interests. The US claimed to be liberating Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury) in 1983, defending democracy in Panama (“Operation Just Cause”) in 1989, protecting human rights in Bosnia in 1994–5, preventing genocide in Yugoslavia (“Operation Noble Anvil”) in 1999, and toppling a brutal tyrant in Iraq in 2003. From 2001 to the present it has appealed to human rights discourses in its occupation of Afghanistan (“Operation Enduring Freedom” and “Operation Freedom’s Sentinel”). In every one of these cases it claimed to be restoring democracy. 43. Jan Hancock, Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Routledge, 2007). Also see Andrew Moravcsik’s “The paradox of U.S. human rights policy,” Stanley Hoffman’s “American exceptionalism, the new version,” and John Gerard Ruggie’s “American exceptionalism, exemptionalism and global governance,” in M. Ignatieff (ed.), American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 44. Simon Adams, “Libya and the responsibility to protect: results and prospects,” Global Policy Journal, March 28, 2014. Available at http://www.globalpolicy journal.com/blog/28/03/2014/libya-and-responsibility-protect-results-andprospects (accessed February 26, 2017). Also see Jayshree Bajoria, “Libya and the responsibility to protect,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 24, 2011.

46

45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Available at http://www.cfr.org/libya/libya-responsibility-protect/p24480 (accessed February 26, 2017). For example, Iran’s Shah, Egypt’s Sadat and Mubarak, the al-Sauds, al-Sabahs, al-Khalifas, al-Thanis, etc. The US policy of “dual containment” applied to both Iraq and Iran following the Gulf War. The US and its allies (the UK, France, and Turkey) enforced the no-fly zone over northern and southern Iraq (allegedly authorized by UNSCR 688), and participated in the UN weapons inspection and disarmament program (conducted by the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) in fulfillment of UNSCR 1154). United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, passed on November 29, 1990. See The Iraq Liberation Act, from The US Government Printing Office. Available at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-105publ338/html/PLAW105publ338.htm (accessed December 27, 2015). The post-Gulf War sanctions regime and containment policy was meant to spur the Iraqi people into rising up and toppling the government. The Iraq Liberation Act. These intergovernmental organizations include the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. The Arab Charter on Human Rights, which entered into force in March 2008, denies the region’s citizens numerous protections. “The Charter does not prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments, nor does it extend rights to non-citizens in many areas. It also allows for the imposition of restrictions on the exercise of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion far beyond international human rights law, which allows for restrictions only on the manifestations of a religion or belief, but not on the freedom to hold a religion or belief. Moreover, the Charter leaves many important rights to national legislation. For example, it allows for the imposition of the death penalty against children if national law allows it. Thus the Charter mirrors to a large degree the areas of acceptance and reservations regarding international human rights treaties by member states of the Arab League.” Mervat Rishmawi, “The Arab Charter on Human Rights,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 6, 2009. Available at http://carnegieendowment.org/2009/10/06/arabcharter-on-human-rights/2z1r (accessed February 26, 2017). However, some MENA region states do provide such legal protections, e.g. Turkey, Lebanon. See Jane R. Harrigan and Hamed El-Said, “The economic impact of IMF and World Bank programs in the Middle East and North Africa: a case study of Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, 1983 –2004,” Review of Middle East Economics and Finance 6/2 (2010), pp. 1 – 25. The meliorists’ agenda corresponds, via the imperative to liberalize trade, with the advancement of neoliberalism and cultural homogenization (consumerism) that in a quasi-colonialist, neo-imperialist fashion ignores cultural difference and the autochthonous values of peoples in the name of advancing human rights.

WASHINGTON'S LIBERALIST IDEOLOGICAL STANCE

47

55. An excellent recent example of this is President Obama’s June 2009 speech at Cairo University, in which he asserted: “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” He then went on to articulate the aims of the liberalist ideological orientation, after denying that Western prejudices motivated him to do so: No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation by any other. That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere. Now, there is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: Governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. [. . .] [N]o matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who would hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy. President Obama’s speech rehearsed the fundamental tenets of the liberalist ideological orientation that motivated the American Constitution’s framers, which derived from Montesquieu and Locke, in addition to Cicero and Aristotle. The speech illustrated how the ideals and idiomatic rationales of liberal ideologues blind them to the ways in which their liberalist ideological orientation rhetorically masks the illiberal implications of post-colonial Western discourses and their operation. For the complete text, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/ 04obama.text.html.

CHAPTER 2 STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?: FRAMING US FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST UPRISINGS Anthony R. DiMaggio

Much academic and intellectual attention has been directed toward the “Arab Spring” examining issues such as democratization, representation, and revolutionary politics in the Middle East and North Africa.1 The uprisings have included nonviolent protests, demonstrations, and civil disobedience, in addition to violent tactics such as riots, insurgency, and civil war. The Arab uprisings started in late 2010 with the Tunisian revolution, and continued through 2011 with uprisings in Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and elsewhere. They have produced a global discussion about prospects for democracy in regions of the world that have long been characterized by repressive, dictatorial governments. My main interest in the Arab protests is in understanding how the American public witnessed, and did not witness, these events, and in analyzing what factors influenced the public’s consciousness on the uprisings. American political leaders and citizens have long prided themselves in supporting human rights and democracy across the globe, but critics of US foreign policy portray American political motives as driven instead by strategic calculations and an effort to maximize US influence and power over other countries and regions of the world.

50

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

In this chapter, I review US media coverage of the Arab uprisings by examining seven case studies, periods defined by public protest and revolt against government from six countries: Egypt (2011), Libya (2011), Syria (2011 and 2013), Bahrain (2011), Saudi Arabia (2011– 12), and Yemen (2011). These specific periods were chosen because they represent important moments in history when citizens and rebel groups rose to challenge nondemocratic regimes. In more detail, these periods are broken down as follows: .

.

.

.

.

.

Egypt (January 25–February 11, 2011): This period started with revolutionary public protests against the government of Hosni Mubarak in late January, and continued through his eventual resignation from office by early February, in anticipation of a future democratic election to choose a new president. Libya (February 15–April 30, 2011): This period began with protests against the government of Muammar Gaddafi and ended with the implementation of a no-fly zone by the US and its allies in an effort to prevent Gaddafi from attacking civilian populations in rebelheld areas. Syria (March 15 – October 31, 2011): These eight months started with protests against the government of Bashar al-Assad, continued through July 2011, which represented the official end of civil protests independent of violent insurgency, and finished with July to October 2011, which was marked by the continuation of protests and the beginning of a violent insurgency campaign against Assad. Syria (August 1 – September 30, 2013): This period was characterized by the continuation of violent rebellion against the government of Assad, but is notable because it also involved extended discussions in the US over whether to militarily intervene against Assad in light of allegations that he used chemical weapons against the Syrian people. Bahrain (February 14 – March 18, 2011): This two-month span included the beginning of protests against the government of Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa and ended with violent government suppression of those protests. Saudi Arabia (March 1, 2011 – December 31, 2012): This period was defined by extended public protests against the Saudi royal family, accompanied by criticisms of government human rights

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

.

51

violations against citizen’s groups and demonstrators. The protests eventually ended in December 2012, due in large part to continued government repression of those protesting government human rights violations. Yemen (January 1–April 30, 2011): This four-month period started with revolutionary demonstrations against the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh and ended with his resignation, in anticipation of a future democratic election to choose a new president.

I examine how the political discourses in the US media influenced what rebellions American citizens followed and what they thought of them, in addition to reviewing how lack of media attention to some protests resulted in them being omitted from public consideration. My major findings are two-fold. First, one sees that the foreign policy priorities of the Obama administration exerted a substantial influence on news content. In the case of the Arab uprisings, journalists drew attention to specific conflicts that were of paramount importance to the president while constructing a positive narrative that framed the US as motivated by human rights and democracy. Simultaneously, the media downplayed the importance of conflicts that were of a lower priority to the president and were heavily marginalized in media discourse. Second, journalists’ efforts to construct narratives sympathetic to US presidential priorities and to marginalize developments that threatened to undermine US foreign policy priorities had a substantial impact on public opinion. The media constructed favorable narratives when it came to issues US officials preferred to focus on, while downplaying developments and protests that could potentially undermine presidential priorities. While the Middle East and North Africa remain important to US interests, the Obama administration – through its willingness to publicly address some uprisings while downplaying others – implicitly deemed some conflicts to be of a higher or lower priority than others during the period from 2011 through 2013. This development was apparent when examining the number of statements and speeches delivered by the executive branch covering each uprising. This chapter examines how the public priorities of the Obama administration – most specifically its communications with the public – influenced the coverage, or lack thereof, of individual uprisings. It examines how the priorities of the Obama administration influenced how issues of human

52

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

rights and democracy were reported on a country-by-country basis. My findings suggest that the administration’s choice to emphasize some conflicts over others, rather than show a genuine concern with human rights and democracy, was the driving factor in determining US reporting in the Middle East, and that the administration’s messages and rhetoric exerted a significant impact when it came to influencing public opinion.

What We Know About Presidents, the Media, and Public Opinion Much energy has been spent by scholars examining how the news media “frame” events, thereby influencing how the general public processes information on important political matters.2 The ability of media to highlight some points of view, positions, or facets of reality at the expense of others carries with it potentially significant consequences. If news audiences are only exposed to some positions and ideas while being prevented from considering others, that can influence how they form their opinions. Scholars speak of the way in which beliefs and attitudes are “socially constructed,” referring to the process through which consciousness and beliefs are created and maintained.3 Social construction remains a useful lens for interpreting how the public engages in the political process. Whether political officials succeed in socially constructing beliefs and attitudes is a topic that remains highly relevant to the study of popular consent in allegedly democratic, western societies. In his work Constructing Public Opinion, communication scholar Justin Lewis argues that political and business elites utilize the news media to disseminate narratives about the world that are sympathetic to their own interests and values. More specifically, Lewis maintains, both elite groups promote in media discourse the belief that the American public is center-right in its politics, despite numerous public opinion polls suggesting that they are consistently center-left. This narrative, Lewis claims, serves the interests of political and business elites, who themselves embrace centrist-to-conservative beliefs.4 Lewis’ work remains relevant here because it suggests that the social construction process itself may be used as a tool for disseminating information that shapes media discourse and public attitudes in favor of elite interests.

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

53

Similarly, I find that presidents are able to mold media content to favor their own foreign policy interests and agendas. Two main schools of thought dominate the study of political officials’ efforts to build public consent. One school argues that presidents, and other political officials, are effective in utilizing rhetoric, and in influencing media content, in their efforts to “manufacture consent” of the public in favor of official narratives.5 Journalists are seen as largely failing to engage in serious challenges to official rhetoric, agendas, and propaganda.6 Some studies also find that the public is heavily influenced by, or “indoctrinated” into accepting, official agendas because of official dominance of the news.7 In contrast, the second school of thought argues that political officials, particularly presidents, face great difficulties in building public consent, due in significant part to a media system that is supposedly highly critical and negative of official agendas.8 Presidents are depicted as either ineffective or inconsistently effective in cultivating public support for their policy agendas, for a variety of reasons.9 Political leaders seek to utilize the news media to socially construct public beliefs that reinforce their foreign policy goals. Looking specifically at the Arab uprisings, I examine how the president’s foreign policy agenda influenced the news and then the public’s foreign policy attitudes. The conclusions from the seven cases examined here are hardly the final say regarding the question of how political officials interact with the media and public. But the findings should be taken seriously in light of a consistent pattern that emerges across the cases examined.

Expectations In the foreign policy realm, US officials and presidents appear to be incredibly effective in dominating the messages to which Americans are exposed in the news media. Due to their dominance of information, political officials are also exceedingly effective in “manufacturing consent” in favor of preferred ideas, beliefs, and foreign policy agendas. Below, I establish some specific expectations regarding media coverage and public opinion of the Arab uprisings. Regarding the impact of presidential agendas on the media, I expect that: .

In specific uprisings in which the executive branch expresses a greater interest (or priority) in the events occurring, journalists should

54

.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

respond by devoting more attention to these events; for uprisings in which the executive expresses less interest, coverage should be lower (attention here is measured by tabulating the number of stories printed, on average, per day on each uprising). In uprisings of greater priority to the executive, coverage of human rights and democracy should occur more frequently, whereas coverage of these two themes should be less frequent for uprisings of lower priority to the executive.

As I argue later, greater public attention to some uprisings over others occurs in large part because the executive branch chooses to emphasize those conflicts more, thereby leading to greater media attention to those conflicts. Table 2.1 examines the executive branch’s publicly stated foreign policy priorities, as measured by official statements, letters, proclamations, executive orders, speeches, memorandums, or other remarks issued by President Obama and the executive branch, and as related to seven different uprising events in the Middle East and North Africa. The administration’s reasons for prioritizing some protests over others were determined primarily by the particulars of each respective set of events in the context of the administration’s determination of US national interests. Looking at the three uprisings gaining the greatest attention from the US executive – Egypt (2011), Libya (2011), and Syria (2013) – one can see that these countries were of significant strategic importance to the US. The revolt in Libya represented an Table 2.1

Executive Priorities in the Arab Uprisings (2011 – 13)

Country Egypt (1/25–2/11/2011) Libya (2/15 –4/30/2011) Syria (8/1–9/30/2013) Syria (3/15 –10/31/2011) Bahrain (2/14 –3/18/2011) Saudi Arabia (3/1/2011– 12/31/2012) Yemen (1/1 –4/30/2011)

Average Number of References per Month 8.8 3.6 3 1.9 1 0.3 0.25

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

55

attack on a regime that was deemed an enemy to the US, seen most specifically in Obama’s own calls for the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi by 2011.10 The revolution in Egypt represented a rebellion against a long-standing strategic US ally, headed by a dictator, Hosni Mubarak, who received billions in US foreign aid.11 Debate over whether to take military action in Syria was also of strategic importance because of Assad’s status as an enemy of the US during the period of the Arab uprisings. While the US and Syria maintained lukewarm relations in the 2000s, when the Bush administration used Syria as a site for the rendition and interrogation of US detainees in the “War on Terrorism,” the Obama administration officially called for the overthrow of Assad by 2011.12 By 2013, the relationship had grown even more confrontational as the Obama administration moved to provide military aid to rebel groups seeking Assad’s removal.13 In sum, the amount of attention to these countries from the Obama administration suggested that they were hugely important to US interests in the Middle East and North Africa. Unlike in Egypt, protests in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia represented threats to US-allied regimes that were readily and quickly suppressed by the governments involved. The intensity of the threats to the Bahraini and Saudi governments were not as severe as in cases like Egypt, Libya, and Syria because of rapid, US-supported repression in the former countries. The low concern with the overthrow of these allied regimes is likely to have played a role in suppressing the Obama administration’s public expressions of concern with these countries. Furthermore, the Obama administration likely wanted to avoid critical attention to these regimes in general. Any significant attention to these countries by the press could undermine lofty US rhetoric about promoting democracy and citizen empowerment throughout the world, which was blatantly contradicted by US support to two regimes with such poor human rights records. For both of these reasons, I expect that the revolts in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia would receive meager attention in the US news media. The 2011 Syria protests occurred in the very early stages of a rebellion against an enemy state. At this point, however (specifically from March to July), a widespread insurgency against the Assad government had not yet fully emerged. Strategically, it was difficult

56

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

for the US to commit to Assad’s overthrow through military means without a more developed insurgency force, or short of a direct US military commitment to overthrowing Assad.14 Furthermore, the Obama administration had not yet fully committed to a military overthrow, despite its heated rhetoric calling for the overthrow of Assad.15 In light of the US’ limited options in confronting Syria in 2011, and Obama’s mixed feelings about confrontation at this point, it is to be expected that administrative (and media) attention to Syria would be modest at best. Finally, the domestic protests in Yemen were against a regime allied with the US, but the strength of this alliance was relatively low-profile compared to other alliances in the region. With regard to media coverage, the Obama administration never made Yemen a focal point of its foreign policy. For this reason, it is to be expected that Yemen would receive little attention in the news. I establish a second set of expectations, this time for the impact of media coverage (or lack of media coverage) on public attitudes. For protests in which the Obama administration demonstrated little public interest, and which were rarely reported in the news, the American public should remain largely unaware, freeing up the president to conduct relations with strategic allies as he deemed fit. More specifically: those uprisings that are marginalized in the news should be almost completely ignored (or largely ignored) by public polling organizations, thereby depriving the public of even the chance of considering and expressing opinions about what is happening in those places, and ensuring that these issues are kept out of public discourse. These expectations apply to four specific cases: Yemen, Bahrain, Syria (2011), and Saudi Arabia. In contrast, for uprisings that remained of vital importance to the Obama administration (as measured by the frequency of the executive’s attention and statements devoted to them), the effects of media coverage should be favorable in terms of manufacturing public consent among Americans paying attention to the news. For the events in Egypt, Libya, and Syria (2013), attention to the news – which itself was sympathetic to the narratives and agendas of the Obama administration – should be associated with growing domestic support for US foreign policy.16 More specifically:

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS? .

.

57

In the cases of Libya (2011) and Syria (2013), increased attention to the news should produce growing support for US foreign policy in those countries. In Egypt, public attention to the news should produce growing support for the notion that the US was interested in supporting democracy (contrary to the reality of US support, for Mubarak and opposition to the citizen rebellion).17

Findings In reviewing the seven cases from this chapter, I find consistent evidence for the predictions established above. First, regarding media content, I find that the salience of each uprising in the news was largely determined by the amount of attention that the executive devoted to each uprising. Second, I find that the priority given to each uprising period by the executive branch and in the news influenced the way in which the public engaged, or failed to engage, in each uprising. Table 2.2 provides the findings for each country and news outlet examined. Some countries were far more salient than others in the news, the most heavily covered being Egypt, Syria (2013), and Libya. In contrast, other countries received far less attention and coverage, including Bahrain, Syria (2011), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. These findings are virtually identical to the executive priorities list provided in Table 2.1, which listed Egypt, Syria (2013), and Libya at the top in terms of executive importance, while Bahrain, Syria (2011), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen were listed as less important. The findings are highly uniform across news outlets, regardless of whether one is looking at a local news outlet, more partisan cable outlets, agenda-setting newspapers, or broadcast television. Journalists attempted to report on issues of human rights and democracy on a consistent basis across countries, within the specific confines of a political system that prioritized some protest periods over others, depending on their perceived value to the Obama administration. Tables 2.3 and 2.4 demonstrate that, when it comes to the percent of all stories in each outlet discussing humanitarian issues and democracy, these two frames appeared on a regular basis for each of the uprising periods in question. Uprisings that were paid less attention to by the executive branch were no less likely to be framed in humanitarian or

58 Table 2.2

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Salience of Uprisings in the Arab Uprisings (2011 – 13)

Total Number of Stories (on Average) per Day Mentioning Each Country During Uprising Periods

Egypt Syria (2013) Libya Bahrain Syria (2011) Saudi Arabia Yemen

NY Times

Wash Post

Daily Herald

17 12.2 8 4.6 4 2.3 2.7

15.2 19.4 6 3 4 2.7 2

4.8 3.1 2.5 0.9 0.8 0.4 0.7

Fox CNN MSNBC CBS News 38 22.1 20 11 8.5 3.2 6.6

3.5 2.5 2.1 0.5 0.5 0.2 0.5

3.8 2.7 2.9 1.4 1 0.2 0.7

11.8 5.9 5.6 1.6 1.5 0.5 1.4

democratic terms. For example, the Bahraini protests – an issue of lower priority for the Obama administration – were framed within democratic and humanitarian terms even more often than the Egyptian protests. In contrast, the protests in Libya – of high priority to the Obama administration – were consistently more likely to be depicted within democratic and humanitarian frameworks than were protests in Yemen or Saudi Arabia. Simply by examining Tables 2.3 and 2.4, one could conclude that journalists do not systematically prioritize or favor some countries over others when it comes to reporting on human rights and Table 2.3

Human Rights and the Arab Uprisings (2011 –13)

Percent of Stories on Each Country Referencing “Human Rights” or “Humanitarian” Issues During Uprising Periods

Egypt Libya Syria (2013) Bahrain Syria (2011) Saudi Arabia Yemen

NY Times

Wash Post

Daily Herald

18 33 16 47 24 12 17

18 41 12 51 29 10 15

10 32 11 23 10 7 11

Fox CNN MSNBC CBS News 28 55 18 29 40 12 21

19 47 28 6 17 2 16

52 45 7 30 24 9 8

14 39 13 25 18 6 18

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS? Table 2.4

59

Democracy and the Arab Uprisings (2011 –13)

Percent of Stories on Each Country Referencing “Democracy” or “Democratic” Issues During Uprising Periods

Egypt Libya Syria (2013) Bahrain Syria (2011) Saudi Arabia Yemen

NY Times

Wash Post

Daily Herald

40 20 17 47 25 12 28

43 21 21 51 26 14 26

33 13 21 23 13 10 20

Fox CNN MSNBC CBS News 53 28 23 29 23 10 22

83 34 47 24 23 12 32

52 11 8.7 30 16 8 21

53 21 23 25 22 11 22

democracy in the Arab uprisings. But this conclusion is inaccurate because it does not take into account how consistently news audiences were exposed to humanitarian and democratic frames, as related to each uprising period. For example, by examining Tables 2.3 and 2.4, one might believe that human rights and democracy were of regular importance in reporting on the 2011 Syrian protests. But the frequency of such references within stories does not necessarily count for much if the issue of Syria appeared in the news far less frequently than other uprisings. Relatively fewer references to human rights and democracy in protest periods covered far more often would translate into more regular exposure to such themes in news reports. I am not only interested in whether each conflict was reported using certain frames, but also in how often news audiences were exposed to those frames. To answer the “how often” question, I calculated the frequency with which frames appeared in the news for each of the uprising periods analyzed. Tables 2.5 and 2.6 include these results, measuring how many times on average per day news audiences were exposed to stories associating each country with issues of human rights and democracy. These tables provide evidence that American news audiences were more or less likely to be exposed to humanitarian and democratic themes in news stories depending on the level of importance attributed to each uprising by the Obama administration. For example, references to humanitarian or

60 Table 2.5

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Variation in Salience of Human Rights by Country (2011 –13)

Total Number of Stories (on Average) per Day Referencing “Human Rights” or “Humanitarian” Issues

Egypt Libya Syria (2013) Bahrain Syria (2011) Saudi Arabia Yemen

NY Times

Wash Post

Daily Herald

3 2.6 2 2.1 1 0.3 0.5

2.7 2.5 2.3 1.5 1.2 0.3 0.3

0.5 0.8 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.03 0.1

Fox CNN MSNBC CBS News 10.6 11 4 3.2 3.4 0.4 1.4

0.7 1 0.7 0.03 0.1 0 0.1

2 1.3 0.2 0.4 0.2 0 0.1

1.7 2.2 0.8 0.4 0.3 0.03 0.3

human rights issues in the protests in Egypt, Syria (2013), and Libya appeared in between 4 to 11 stories a day on CNN. By comparison, these same issues appeared in between 0.4 to 3.4 stories per day in CNN coverage of protests in Syria (2011), Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Coverage is starkly different across countries, with humanitarian themes appearing more than 27 times as often in CNN reporting in the case of Egypt as compared to Saudi Arabia. Reviewing the appearance of democratic frames in the news, one sees a similar pattern in Table 2.6. Democratic frames associated with Egypt appeared more than 66 times as often in CNN reporting on Egypt than in reporting on Saudi Arabia. Similar levels of imbalance, between protests deemed of higher and lower importance by the Obama administration, are apparent in the findings for all media outlets examined for Tables 2.5 and 2.6.

Alternative Explanations for Patterns in News Coverage? It is at least theoretically possible that the patterns observed in the news above could be due to some other factor that influenced news coverage. For example, one could claim that concerns with the severity of the human rights crisis in each uprising drove how often the Obama administration addressed each case in question, thereby influencing how often human rights issues were discussed in the news. Or prospects for democracy in each country (with some countries closer to achieving

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS? Table 2.6

61

Variation in Salience of Democracy by Country (2011 –13)

Total Number of Stories (on Average) per Day Referencing “Democracy” or “Democratic” Issues

Egypt Libya Syria (2013) Bahrain Syria (2011) Saudi Arabia Yemen

NY Times

Wash Post

Daily Herald

6.8 1.6 2.1 2.2 1 0.3 0.8

6.5 1.3 4.1 1.5 1 0.4 0.5

1.6 0.3 0.7 0.2 0.1 0.04 0.1

Fox CNN MSNBC CBS News 20 5.6 5.1 3.2 2 0.3 1.5

2.9 0.7 1.2 0.1 0.1 0.02 0.2

2 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.2 0.02 0.1

6.3 1.2 1.4 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.3

revolution or new democratic elections than others) could have influenced how often the Obama administration focused on each country, thereby leading to greater focus on democratic issues among journalists. Political leaders often claim to hold idealistic intentions that drive their foreign policy. Furthermore, international relations scholars have argued at times in favor of “democratic peace theory,” which suggests that democratic political institutions (that respect human rights) in a country such as the US lead it to promote such principles in its foreign policy and toward other countries.18 In order to assess these alternative hypotheses, one would need to examine how close each country in question was to achieving democratic reform, and how grave the human rights conditions actually were in the periods analyzed. Regarding human rights, I provide a simple measure in Table 2.7 of estimates for how many protestors were killed in each uprising period that was examined. This rank-ordering suggests that human rights concerns (in terms of the death count) varied greatly country-by-country. Syria and Libya saw the worst death counts among protestors and other rebel groups, while countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain saw far fewer deaths. There are some similarities between the rank-ordering of human rights concerns in Table 2.7 and the coverage of human rights issues in Table 2.5. Human rights concerns in Syria (2013) and Libya were paramount in terms of the number of people killed, and these countries

62

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

also ranked on top of the list of countries examined regarding reporting of human rights issues. Similarly, the number of people killed in Saudi Arabia and Yemen were comparatively low, and those two uprising periods ranked at the bottom of the list of countries when it came to reporting on human rights. However, a significant divergence between the severity of human rights issues and coverage of human rights is also apparent. While Syria (2011) ranked the third highest on the list of death counts, this protest period ranked near the bottom of the list when it came to news reporting of human rights issues (Table 2.5). Also, deaths in Egypt were light compared to those in Syria or Libya, yet Egypt ranked at the very top of the list when it came to reporting on human rights issues (also Table 2.5). In short, the evidence that severity of human rights transgressions matched intensity of coverage is mixed-to-inconsistent at best. A second issue also emerges regarding human rights. Some protests were unlikely to lead to higher death rates, in light of how little progress these countries made in promoting revolutions. Protests in countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were quickly suppressed, in part due to the significant military, economic, and diplomatic support governments received from the US. In those situations, it seems that human rights crises never fully emerged, considering the relatively low-level threats to the Khalifa and Saudi governments. In contrast, US support for rebel groups in Libya and Syria appears to have encouraged rebel groups to eventually commit (or at least intensify their commitment) to violent rebellions against the Gaddafi and Assad governments. In those situations, death counts were far higher, considering that these governments understood the significant threats rebel groups posed to their power and existence. Escalating their human rights atrocities then led these countries to be ranked higher on the list of death counts. In other words, US strategic interests in suppressing rebellions in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain (both countries strongly allied with the US) led to aborted revolutions with smaller death counts, while strategic interests in supporting revolutions against enemy states likely led to escalation of insurgency and higher death counts. In these cases, human rights violations themselves were influenced to a significant extent by US strategic considerations. These two factors cannot be divorced from each other.

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

63

Table 2.7 Human Rights Concerns: A Comparative Assessment by Country and Conflict (2011 – 13) Country Syria (Aug –Sept 2013) Libya (Feb –Apr, 2011) Syria (Mar –Oct 2011) Egypt (Jan –Feb 2011) Yemen (Jan –Apr 2011) Bahrain (Feb –Mar 2011) Saudi Arabia (Mar 2011 –Dec 2012)

Estimated Number Killed 100,000 10,000 5,000 800 130 20 19

The prospects for democracy in each uprising bore little resemblance to the frequency of reporting on democracy for each period examined. Only two countries during the time periods reviewed appeared to be close to overthrowing their dictators: Egypt and Yemen. This point is clear when one looks at reports near the end of the periods analyzed, which discussed specific efforts to get Mubarak (in early February) and Saleh (in early April) to step down from power.19 In contrast, when looking at all the other cases – Syria (2011 and 2013), Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Libya – there was little likelihood during the periods examined that demonstrators or insurgents were close to overthrowing their respective governments and instituting democratic elections. Comparing prospects for democracy with coverage of democracy, one sees major discrepancies. While Egypt is listed at the top of the list in terms of the democracy frame appearing in the news (Table 2.6), Yemen is ranked at the very bottom of the list. What is the empirical basis for discussing prospects for democracy more often in countries like Libya and Syria, when in reality Yemen was far closer to achieving revolutionary (potentially democratic) change? These findings suggest little meaningful correlation between democratic prospects in each country and the frequency of the democracy frame in news reports.

Manufacturing Consent? The Media and Public Opinion The evidence that the news is dominated by official interests and agendas was presented above, and in this section I argue that there is also

64

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

substantial evidence that officials used the media to manufacture public consent and ignorance. In examining manufactured consent, it is necessary to separate out my analysis into two groups of uprisings: those that received heavy attention in the news (Egypt, Syria in 2013, and Libya), and those that did not (Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria in 2011). In those protests deemed of relatively lower importance by the Obama administration, public support for US foreign policy was often maintained (particularly for Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia) by deterring Americans from even thinking about these developments in the first place. As demonstrated in Table 2.2, the protests in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria (2011) received little attention in the news, compared to the other protests deemed of high significance by the Obama administration. It makes little sense to try and measure the effects of media coverage on public opinion for these issues, when there was almost no coverage of these uprisings in the first place. Put simply, these protests were nonissues for journalists, polling organizations, and the public. Because some protests were so scarcely covered in the news and in national political discourse, polling organizations did not even bother to survey Americans to measure what they thought of these issues. In contrast, other issues were so heavily emphasized by political officials and the media that they were heavily polled. Table 2.8 provides validation of the above points, across all the uprising periods examined. Americans were far more frequently polled on the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, and Syria (2013). From 12 to 28 survey questions were put forward on average per month for these conflicts, as seen in the Pew findings. The findings from dozens of polling organizations (seen in the iPoll results) overlap with the Pew findings. In contrast, one sees that questions covering the protests in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria (2011) seldom appeared, in both the Pew and iPoll databases. Americans may have formed significant or meaningful opinions on the rebellions in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria (2011), but there was little likelihood of this happening when these events were almost entirely erased from the news. Some rebellions were deemed non-issues by the executive branch and subsequently received little attention in the news. Because of their nearomission from the news and public discourse, neglected rebellions were seldom surveyed by major polling organizations. The lack of such

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS? Table 2.8

Country Egypt Libya Syria (2013) Syria (2011) Bahrain Saudi Arabia Yemen

65

Salience of Protest Events in Public Opinion Surveys (2011–13) Average Number of Survey Questions per Month (Pew Research Center)

Average Number of Survey Questions per Month (iPoll database)20

28.2 15.6 12 0.7 0 0.1 0

63.5 49.2 74 1.5 2 0.5 0.5

surveys suggested polling groups concluded there was a lack of public concern with, and contemplation of, these rebellions. The trends described immediately above are observed in the cases of Egypt and Libya, although not for Syria (2013). For Egypt, an examination of national surveys finds significant public support for the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda. In February 2011, 66 percent of Americans surveyed indicated that they felt Obama’s “handling” of the “situation in Egypt” was either “good” or “very good,” compared to just 28 percent who felt it was “poor” or “very poor.”21 A February CBS survey found that attention to the news on Egypt was associated with greater likelihood of accepting the belief that the protests were important to the US, with recognition that Egypt was an important ally to the US, and with the belief that the US should play an active role in promoting democracy in Egypt.22 News audiences would be expected to ascertain the importance of Egypt as an ally in light of the large amount of media attention devoted to the protests there. They also would be expected to support an active US role in Egyptian politics (in line with the Obama administration’s agenda), even if the US government had a long record of helping suppress democracy in Egypt by supporting the Mubarak dictatorship. Public opinion also favored Obama on the intervention in Libya. Polling from March 2011 found that 55 percent of Americans agreed with “taking increased military action against Libya to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power.” An April survey found that 56 percent agreed with “U.S. military aircraft” participating with “a coalition of international forces” in attacking “Libyan forces” that were “threatening

66

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

civilians.” The effects of media discourse on public opinion were similar to those in Egypt. My review of a Pew Research Center survey from March 2011 found that increased attention to the news was associated with increased support for US intervention against Gaddafi, with instituting new sanctions on Libya, with the introduction of a no-fly zone to protect civilians from government aerial bombing, with a US aerial bombing campaign, and with sending arms to Libyan rebel groups.23 The case of Syria (2013) appears to be the only uprising examined where political officials and the media failed to build significant support for the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda. In general, public opinion of the proposed intervention in Syria was widely opposed, despite the emphasis on human rights and democracy in administration rhetoric and in the news, and the high salience of this conflict in the public mind. Despite the Obama administration’s claims that Assad used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, a Pew Research Center survey from September 2013 found that a majority of Americans agreed that US airstrikes would make things worse and that the US faced no good options in dealing with Syria. Less than half of Americans felt that US credibility would be hurt if it did not act, and that the Syrian civil war represented any sort of threat to the US.24 Attention to the news was not consistently associated with support for Obama and taking action. While those paying greater attention to the news were more likely to agree with Obama that Assad had used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, they were also more likely to feel that Obama had not clearly explained why US military action was needed, and that the US should first secure a UN resolution authorizing the use of force before entering a military engagement.25 Growing support for the notion that Assad used chemical weapons was likely related to the heavy reporting of such claims, arising from the Obama administration. Of course, growing opposition to taking action may also be related to media coverage of Republicans who challenged the president’s proposed actions in Syria.26 I have sought in previous research to explore why the public rebelled against the war agenda in Syria, as it represents the only exception to the general trend of manufactured consent covered in the other six uprising periods examined in this chapter. I argue that the particular events associated with the 2013 conflict motivated Americans to oppose another war in the Middle East.27 This opposition was motivated in great part by

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

67

war burnout on the part of the American public, especially after the negative experiences in Iraq, evident in US involvement in a civil war that produced thousands of US military casualties. Furthermore, in light of the false reasons for war given to justify the 2003 invasion – related to Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – Americans were suspicious of another war against a Middle East dictator based on unproven assertions regarding WMD. Public support was cultivated for a short-term, limited intervention in Libya, likely because most Americans could see an imminent humanitarian threat to civilians, which was evident in Gaddafi’s suppression of human rights and his military attacks against civilians in rebel-held regions. But support for the use of ground troops in either Libya or Syria, or for taking any action at all in Syria, was far weaker in light of the war fatigue felt by Americans in the lengthy military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Main Lessons Main lessons from this study include the following. First, I find that the frequency of news coverage of each of the Arab uprisings was driven by the amount of attention that the executive devoted to each uprising. Second, the frequency of news coverage, and the way stories were framed in the media to reinforce official rhetoric influenced how the public formed its opinions of each uprising. Some countries were much more salient in the news, the most attended to being Egypt, Syria (2013), and Libya. On the other hand, other countries received far less coverage, including Bahrain, Syria (2011), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. In uprisings heavily emphasized in the news, the Obama administration was able to strongly influence how the public formed its opinions of US foreign policy. In contrast, other uprisings were essentially non-issues for the public, due to official and media neglect. The findings from this chapter are significant for the study of democracy and human rights. I have sought to provide evidence for how thoughts and beliefs are constructed in the US. Unlike dictatorships, western countries like the US and its western-European allies are generally less likely (although not always) to resort to the use of coercion or violence against citizens in building public consent for government policies. And yet, a main concern of these findings is that in societies that are said to be democratic like the US, public opinion is being

68

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

artificially manufactured by political and media elites, without providing citizens a wider range of views regarding important foreign policy matters. Citizens at times reject the messages disseminated in the news, as seen in the case of Syria (2013), but throughout most of the uprisings, public consent in the US was built through the use of highly politicized news coverage on issues related to human rights and democracy, or through the almost total omission of some of the uprisings from public discourse. Human rights and democracy became legitimate topics of discussion in specific uprisings that were seen as important (for strategic reasons) by the Obama administration. In cases when the executive expressed less public interest, Americans were rarely exposed to rebellions, or to discussions of how they related to prospects for promoting human rights and democracy. The one-sidedness and politicization of the coverage had little to do with legitimate official concern with human rights and democracy across the board. In a representative democracy, citizens must rely on media to disseminate many different points of view, even those deemed inconvenient or unacceptable to political elites. There are numerous reasons why a press free from government control is necessary to democracy. First, officials can (and do) misinform, deceive, and even lie to the public about important political matters. If citizens are denied (by the media) the information necessary to question official rhetoric and agendas, democracy becomes little more than a farce. Second, Americans by the 2010s had expressed a record distrust of political officials and their agendas.28 If (distrusted) political officials and journalists deny citizens the ability to think about human rights and democracy in ways that are independent of official agendas, then the development of an informed, independent population is difficult, if not impossible. Regarding foreign policy and the Arab uprisings, it appears that most Americans never developed opinions that were also informed by foundational challenges to official rhetoric and claims. If “human rights” and “democracy” are simply rhetorical tools used by government to conceal strategic US interests, and if Americans are indoctrinated by the media not to question official misinformation, then Americans’ ability to think independently of and question political elites is severely inhibited. The abilities to exercise independent thought and to question officials are widely considered hallmarks of a democratic citizenry, but were in short supply in the Arab uprisings.

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

69

Notes 1. James L. Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds, The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Marc Lynch (ed.), The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2014); Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren, The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); David W. Lesch and Mark L. Haas (eds), The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2012); Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013). 2. Robert M. Entman, “Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm,” Journal of Communication 434 (1993), pp. 51 – 8; Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: an Essay on the Organization of Experience (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 1986); Mark Major, The Unilateral Presidency and the News Media: the Politics of Framing Executive Power (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2014); Karen S. Johnson-Cartee, News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004); Diana Kendall, Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011); Halim Rane, Jacqui Ewart, and John Martinkus, Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises and Contexts (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3. In communication studies, see the following: Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1967); Justin Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2001); Anthony R. DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and US Foreign Policy Since 9/11 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015). 4. Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion, pp. 44–55; Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright, “Democracy and the policy preferences of wealthy Americans,” Perspectives on Politics 11/1 (2013), pp. 51 – 73. 5. DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope; Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York, NY: Pantheon, 2011); Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1997); James N. Druckman and Lawrence R. Jacobs, Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 6. Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: the Media and Vietnam (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986); W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from

70

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Iraq to Katrina (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Jonathan Mermin, Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of US Intervention in the PostVietnam Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Anthony R. DiMaggio, When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2010). John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha and Jeffrey S. Peake, Breaking Through the Noise: Presidential Leadership, Public Opinion, and the News Media (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Brigitte L. Nacos, Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, and Robert Y. Shapiro, Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); Scott A. Bonn, Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the US War on Iraq (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010). Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter, The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of US Presidential Elections, 1988 –2008 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); Larry J. Sabato, Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism and American Politics (Baltimore, MD: Lanahan, 2000); Matthew R. Kerbel, If It Bleeds, It Leads: an Anatomy of Television News (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001); Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order: an Incisive and Boldly Original Critique of the News Media’s Domination of America’s Political Process (New York, NY: Vintage, 2011); Stanley Feldman, Leonie Huddy, and George E. Marcus, Going to War in Iraq: When Citizens and the Press Matter (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015). B. Dan Wood, The Myth of Presidential Representation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Jeffrey E. Cohen, The Presidency in the Era of 24-Hour News (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Brandon Rottinghaus, The Provisional Pulpit: Modern Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010); Jeffrey E. Cohen, Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Diane J. Heith, The Presidential Road Show: Public Leadership in an Era of Party Polarization and Media Fragmentation (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013). Mark Landler, “Obama tells Gaddafi to quit and authorizes refugee airlifts,” New York Times, March 3, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/ 03/04/world/africa/04president.html?_r¼ 0 (accessed January 13, 2017). Angie D. Holan, “Egypt got more foreign aid than anyone besides Israel, says New York Times columnist Ross Douthat,” Politifact, February 4, 2011. Available at http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/04/ ross-douthat/egypt-got-more-foreign-aid-anyone-besides-israel-s/ (accessed January 13, 2017). Jason Ukman and Liz Sly, “Obama: Syrian president Assad must step down,” Washington Post, August 18, 2011. Available at https://www.washingtonpost. com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/obama-syrian-president-assad-muststep-down/2011/08/18/gIQAM75UNJ_blog.html (accessed January 13, 2017).

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

71

13. Ernesto London˜o and Greg Miller, “CIA begins weapons delivery to Syrian rebels,” Washington Post, September 11, 2013. Available at https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-tosyrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story. html (accessed January 13, 2017). 14. Available evidence suggests that the US had committed to funding domestic groups dedicated to overthrowing Bashar Assad between 2006 to 2010, even if Obama had not yet fully committed to overthrowing Assad by 2011. See CBC News, “US admits funding Syrian opposition,” CBCnews.com, April 18, 2011. Available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-admits-funding-syrian-oppositi on-1.987112 (accessed January 13, 2017). 15. Tara McKelvey, “Arming Syrian rebels: where the US went wrong,” BBC News, October 10, 2015. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408 (accessed January 13, 2017). 16. A measurement of the association between growing public support for US foreign policy and attention to the news is possible because the national surveys I utilize ask Americans about both developments. Polling groups like the Pew Research Center, among others, ask Americans about their level of attention to events and developments in the news, in addition to asking about what the public thinks regarding US foreign policy on the issues in question. 17. In undertaking this study, I made use of a number of data sources for examining presidential messages, media content, and public opinion. In analyzing presidential-executive messages, I relied on the American Presidency Project database from the University of California, Santa Barbara. That archive retains records of numerous presidential communications for individual presidents. In examining media content, I used the Lexis Nexis academic database, reviewing records of news stories for all the news organizations in question. Finally, in analyzing public opinion, I utilized two databases: the Pew Research Center archives and the iPoll survey archives. The Pew Research Center (Princeton University) measures public media attentiveness and public attitudes concerning all types of political issues that are deemed to be salient in American politics. The iPoll service is provided by the Roper Center (University of Connecticut), and retains records from hundreds of thousands of survey questions, conducted by dozens of different survey groups. Regarding media content, I undertake a content analysis for each of the seven cases examined. In measuring how often each country is covered in the news during the specific periods in question, I include any story that makes reference (even a single reference) to each uprising. Furthermore, in measuring how each country is framed in the news, I count the number of times that issues of human rights and democracy appear. More specifically, I include in my findings any time that a news story references the country in question, appearing within 100 words of references to “democracy” or “democratic” issues, or within 100 words of references to “human rights” or “humanitarian” issues.

72

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

In reviewing media content, I include a wide variety of news sources, so as to increase my ability to generalize about the issues covered. I include the major “agenda setting” national newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, which are widely recognized as playing the dominant role in influencing how other news outlets cover important political matters. Furthermore, I include a variety of different television outlets, which are important because of their ability to reach viewers on a mass level. These sources include cable outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, in addition to the broadcast outlet CBS News. Finally, I include a local newspaper as well – the Chicago Daily Herald. This outlet was included because it represents a news source, national newswire agencies, that determine what millions of readers see in local newspapers across the country. Finally, with regard to public opinion, I examine associations between levels of public media consumption on a given uprising on the one hand and opinions of US foreign policy on the other. In measuring these correlations, I statistically control for other demographic variables for news consumers, including respondents’ sex, race, income, age, education, political party, and ideology. Associations are only discussed when they are statistically significant. Growing support for Obama’s foreign policy among those paying attention to the news is taken as evidence of official effectiveness in manufacturing consent, in light of my findings that the administration dominated news coverage in the cases of Syria (2013), Egypt, and Libya. These findings are described in detail in: DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope, Chapters 5, 6, and the Afterword. John R. Oneal and Bruce Russett, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company: 2000). Laura Kasinof and David E. Sanger, “US shifts to seek removal of Yemen’s leader, an ally,” New York Times, April 3, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes. com/2011/04/04/world/middleeast/04yemen.html?pagewanted¼ all&_r ¼ 0 (accessed January 13, 2017); Richard Spencer, “Egypt protests: President Mubarak sacks cabinet but refuses to step down,” Telegraph, January 28, 2011. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaand indianocean/egypt/8290045/Egypt-protests-President-Mubarak-sacks-cabinetbut-refuses-to-step-down.html (accessed January 13, 2017); CNN Wire Staff, “Obama says Egypt’s transition ‘must begin now,’” CNN.com, February 2, 2011. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/01/us.egypt.obama/ (accessed January 13, 2017). As already discussed, the iPoll database archives surveys conducted by many national news organizations and other professional polling firms. It represents an authoritative record of national public opinion polling in the US. DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope, p. 214. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid., pp. 230 – 1. Ibid., p. 277.

STRATEGIC OR DEMOCRATIC INTERESTS?

73

25. Ibid., p. 278. 26. Ibid., pp. 270 – 1. 27. These themes are covered throughout all of Chapter 3 of DiMaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope. 28. Pew Research Center, “Public trust in government: 1958– 2015,” Pew Research Center, November 23, 2015. Available at http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/ 23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/ (accessed January 13, 2017).

CHAPTER 3 THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA, AND THE LINGERING POLITICS OF RWANDA REMORSE Isaac A. Kamola

The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy, as well. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began [. . .] We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past [. . .] We owe to all the people in the world our best efforts to organize ourselves so that we can maximize the chances of preventing these events. Bill Clinton, Kigali1 The image of the US as the world’s sole superpower and undisputed moral leader of the free world has been severely tarnished since the USled invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s. Upon his election President Obama vowed to roll back American unilateralism and adventurist foreign policy, promising to use military intervention only when necessary to “bend history in the direction of justice.”2 However, in the wake of the popular protests across the Arab world between 2010 and 2012, and the subsequent military conflicts that erupted in a number of these countries, the US continued to engage in

76

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

assertive foreign intervention, including remaining in Afghanistan, returning to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, spearheading airstrikes in Libya, supporting rebel groups in Syria, and expanding its drone operations in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Such interventions have been publicly justified not only on the grounds of crippling groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS but also in the name of protecting innocent civilians. Arguments for Western intervention are often accompanied by comparisons with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and reminders that this violence could have been stopped if only the Western countries had intervened. For example, numerous commentators have invoked the memory of the 1994 genocide to advocate for more robust US response to ISIS.3 During 2013, the legacy of the genocide in Rwanda was similarly a refrain in conversations about intervention in the Libyan civil war. While much has been made of the role “the Vietnam Syndrome” and “the Somalia Syndrome” have played curbing American appetite for interventionist policies abroad, I argue that a countervailing force – what I call “Rwanda Remorse” – has been widely deployed within American public discourse, and within the government itself, to justify and propel US interventions abroad. Justifying intervention in Libya and other Arab Spring conflicts based on a comparison with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is not only premised on a faulty comparison but, more importantly, on the false claim that Western powers were not already intervening in Rwanda. In particular, the US was (at the least) tacitly supporting the Rwandan Patriotic Front in its military operations within Rwanda, while also actively intervening in the civil war politically (by forcing democratization) and economically (by demanding the liberalization of markets). While Americans did not put boots on the ground in 1994, to say that the US was not intervening in Rwanda during the early 1990s offers an exceptionally delimited and deeply ideological conception of intervention – namely, one that imagines Western countries as idly standing by, waiting for their opportunity to rush to the aid of countries in desperate need of their generous assistance. This chapter offers an expanded understanding of intervention through a critical rereading of US intervention in Rwanda, making it possible to rethink the way Rwanda Remorse problematically shapes American policy decisions to intervene (or not intervene) in post-Arab Spring conflicts.

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

77

The first section examines how Rwanda Remorse was used to justify intervention in Libya. The second section revisits the genocide in Rwanda and argues that the US was actually actively involved in Rwanda before and during the genocide. I conclude the chapter by examining how this critique of Rwanda Remorse has ramifications in reexamining how Western countries position themselves to address conflicts in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Intervention in Libya and the Ideological Role of Rwanda Remorse On December 18, 2010 – the day after the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi’s public self-immolation – thousands of protestors took to the streets of Tunis demanding the ouster of Tunisian president Ben Ali. The Jasmine Revolution would spark similar waves of protest throughout the Arab world, encouraging massive public demonstrations against authoritarian rule in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere. In February 2011 antigovernment protestors in Libya made considerable headway when opposition groups took control of Benghazi and other cities in the west of the country. The defection of General Abdel-Fattah Younis al-Obeidi and the subsequent creation of the National Transitional Council (NTC) gave legitimacy to the opposition.4 However, by mid-March the Libyan military was poised to retake the opposition stronghold in Benghazi. On March 17 Gaddafi promised to “finish the battle of Benghazi tonight. I will chase you flat by flat.”5 That same night, however, the United Nations passed Resolution 1973, supporting a no-fly zone in Libya. In subsequent months, NATO airstrikes, working in coordination with NTC forces, degraded the Libyan military and the Gaddafi regime. Over the course of several months the rebels captured the country and, in October, seized the final stronghold of Bani Walid, killing Gaddafi in the process. During the lead-up to the vote on UN Resolution 1973, President Obama made it clear that he had no intention of sending troops to Libya. However, he publicly and privately wavered on whether to support NATO airstrikes to defend those in Benghazi, ultimately justifying his actions on the grounds that failing to do so was akin to the kind of heeldragging that enabled the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A number of top advisors and public commentators actively pursued this narrative.

78

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

For example, former US diplomat Peter Galbraith warned that Libya could be “Obama’s Rwanda.”6 Senators Lieberman and McCain publicly issued a statement reminding the world that “[f]rom Bosnia to Rwanda” the “international community has in the past been too slow to react to situations like the one unfolding in Libya.”7 United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon presented Security Council Resolution 1973 as part of an “emerging humanitarian doctrine” that grew out of “the genocides in Srebrenica, Rwanda and even Cambodia.”8 Rwandan President Paul Kagame printed a column in the Times under the title “Rwandans Know Why Gaddafi Must Be Stopped.”9 Privately, a number of Obama’s closest aides – many of whom had witnessed President Clinton’s Rwanda policies firsthand – invoked the genocide in support for intervention. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was First Lady when President Clinton refused to send troops to Rwanda (a position she disapproved of at the time) and, drawing on this experience, offered a strong voice in favor of Libyan intervention.10 Similarly, Obama’s National Security Council senior aide, Samantha Power, was deeply informed by the experience of genocide in Rwanda, having written a Pulitzer-Prize winning book sharply critical of American failure to intervene to prevent genocides in Rwanda and elsewhere.11 And the administration’s United Nations ambassador, Susan Rice, was a member of Clinton’s National Security Council during the 1994 genocide. At that time she argued that the US should avoid using the language of genocide because it would negatively affect the upcoming mid-term elections12 – a position she later came to regret. According to Senator Kerry, who was present during many of the internal discussions about Libya, Obama was eventually convinced to support Libyan intervention after numerous conversations with Clinton, Powers, and Rice in which “the memory of Rwanda” was repeatedly invoked.13 The memory of the genocide in Rwanda has been part of American academic and policy conversations about the politics of foreign intervention since 1994. However, the account commonly told frames the genocide in Rwanda in terms of the West’s failure to intervene. The story goes something like this: On April 6, 1994, returning to Rwanda after signing a peace treaty with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), President Juve´nal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down over Kigali. In a matter of hours radical factions within the Rwandan government, many

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

79

who strongly opposed the treaty, put in motion a premeditated plan to kill Rwandan Tutsis along with political moderate Hutus.14 Despite being already on the ground, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) proved largely ineffective in stemming the violence. Months earlier General Dallaire had presented the UN with mounting evidence of a plan to carry out mass violence against Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsis. These warnings went unheeded as the UN reiterated that UNAMIR was exclusively an observing body and, without a mandate to use force except in self-defense, could not actively intervene in the domestic affairs of Rwanda. During the first day of the genocide, the interahamwe militia targeted and killed ten Belgian peacekeepers as part of a strategy to break the backbone of the United Nation’s peacekeeping operation in Rwanda, and, in subsequent weeks, UN soldiers proved largely unable and unwilling to protect the victimized communities.15 Behind closed doors, Belgium and the US successfully lobbied the Security Council to withdraw UN troops from Rwanda completely. As the UN mission broke down, many voices started calling for the US to intervene unilaterally, arguing that the world’s only superpower had the moral obligation and military ability to end the violence. However, owing to domestic political pressure and “Somalia fatigue” stemming from the recent deaths of 18 soldiers in Mogadishu, the Clinton administration actively avoided calling for intervention and instead publicly engaged in pedantic arguments about the definition of “genocide,” debated the legality of jamming hate-radio stations,16 and expressed concern about the cost of leasing and transporting military equipment.17 During the height of the calls for intervention, the administration even issued a Presidential Decision Directive (PDD-25) sanctioning foreign intervention only for the preservation of US interests. The lengths to which the administration repelled calls for intervention is best summed up in the fairly surreal exchange between Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner and State Department spokesperson Christine Shelly, who refused to call the violence genocide for fear that doing so would make the US culpable for intervention. Under pressure, Shelly admitted that “acts of genocide” had taken place, but when asked how many “acts of genocide” comprise a genocide, responded that she was “not in a position to answer” because it is a “legal definition.”18 While the US dithered, the genocide

80

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

eventually came to an end when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), under the command of Paul Kagame, successfully overthrew the Hutu Power government. Over the course of the 100 days, 500,000 to 1 million lives had been lost. In a public statement – later confirmed by the US Congress, a number of human rights groups, and the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict – General Dallaire stated that 5,000 well-trained foreign troops deployed to Rwanda could have prevented the genocide.19 Since then, the genocide in Rwanda has often been described as a blemish on the foreign policy record of the US and the “international community.” Numerous political officials have publicly apologized for their failure to intervene to stop the violence in Rwanda. In 1998, President Clinton deplaned at the Kigali airport long enough to surround himself with child survivors and express his regret for not “fully appreciat[ing]” what was unfolding in Rwanda four years earlier.20 Later, in his autobiography, Clinton cited the “failure to try to stop Rwanda’s tragedies” as “one of the greatest regrets of my presidency.”21 In April 2000 Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt asked forgiveness for the international community’s failure to prevent the genocide, stating that “the international community as a whole carries a huge and heavy responsibility in the genocide.”22 In 2010 Canadian Governor General Michaelle Jean claimed that Canada failed “to respond adequately to the genocide” and, “as part of the international community, readily acknowledges its fair share of responsibility.”23 On the 20th anniversary of the genocide the White House released a statement saying that the “genocide we remember today – and the world’s failure to respond more quickly – reminds us that we always have a choice. [. . .] In the face of intolerance and suffering, we must never be indifferent.”24 On the one hand, the public display of regret by foreign dignitaries concerning the 1994 genocide speaks to the fact that this event had a considerable effect on the human community. People around the world continue to share the shock, sadness, disbelief, and a deep sense of tragedy and outrage over this moment in human history. The genocide in Rwanda is a human tragedy that requires deep reflection, vocal condemnation, and concerted engagement to ensure that such atrocities never happen again. However, these public displays of remorse – made on behalf of Western governments – risk becoming politically and

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

81

ideologically dubious when they reframe the genocide in Rwanda as a conflict that Western countries could have stopped “if only they had wanted to.” My criticism, of course, is not with the human impulse to want to see mass violence brought to an end. Rather, the problem lies with how expressions of Rwanda Remorse end up justifying a highly moralized, interventionist, messianic, and deeply ahistorical vision of American foreign policy. Public expressions of regret over the failure of Western countries to intervene to end the genocide are deeply problematic in a number of ways. First, public expressions of Rwanda Remorse depict American military intervention as self-evidently desirable, and even necessary, through the invocation of a particularly powerful and seemingly indisputable null-hypothesis. By discursively linking American nonaction to genocidal violence, expressions of Rwanda Remorse serve to cement a common sense vision of what non-intervention looks like. The invocation of this null-hypothesis stands in sharp contrast to the now countless examples of American intervention that – even when justified on humanitarian grounds – actually resulted in greater violence, instability, and loss of American lives.25 In other words, the lack of American intervention in Rwanda is often used as a commonsense countervailing argument against the countless examples of catastrophic Western intervention, such as: “Ignore the fact that US intervention in Iraq was devastating; instead remember what happened when the US failed to intervene in Rwanda.” Second, public displays of Rwanda Remorse present America’s “failure” to intervene in Rwanda as an isolated “mistake” that stands in sharp contrast to an otherwise long and noble track record as an international citizen. Western politicians do not routinely express remorse, for example, over their failure to intervene to end colonialism in Africa, their continued support of apartheid South Africa, their disinterest in the civil war in Sierra Leone or the Congo War, or for backing the catastrophic Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Instead, the genocide in Rwanda has become a clear story of “good” and “evil,” in which an easily avoidable evil was allowed to flourish. But Rwanda Remorse is predicated on a third, even more pronounced, ideological assumption: namely, that the US and other Western countries were not already intervening in Rwanda during the early 1990s. This assumption is patently false.

82

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Western Intervention in Rwanda: 1990 –4 When Rwanda emerges within public discourse, the focus is almost entirely on the hundred days of intense killing that took place between April and July 1994. Absent from most discussions is a recognition that the genocide took place within the context of a multi-year civil war. In October 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF),26 primarily comprising the children of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda. The invasion took place during a time of severe economic and political crisis within Rwanda. Over the next four years the RPF and the Rwandan Armed Forces engaged in insurgency/counter-insurgency, with the brunt of fighting taking place in the countryside. Understanding the genocide within the context of a protracted civil war, rather than merely an unforeseeable and spontaneous explosion of genocidal violence, requires also recognizing that the US and other Western countries were actively intervening in Rwanda in the years leading up to the genocide. In other words, what was apologized for – the failure of Western countries to arrive to stamp out particularly heinous instances of violence in a faraway country – was not actually the story. This is because Western interventions in Rwanda during the 1990s, including military, economic, and political interventions, were largely responsible for creating the conditions that made the genocide possible.

Military Intervention While the extent of US military support for the RPF remains largely unknown and circumstantial, there are a number of indications that when the RPF invaded northern Rwanda in 1990 it did so with the tacit support of the Ugandan and US governments. Ugandan president Museveni came to power as the head of a guerilla army comprised, in large part, of the children of Tutsi refugees expelled from Rwanda between 1959 and 1973.27 By the mid-1970s his 14,000-person National Resistance Army (NRA) contained 3,000 Tutsi refugees, including many in top leadership roles. For example, Fred Rwigyema (the RPF’s first Major General) served as Museveni’s deputy minister of defense, and Paul Kagame (president of Rwanda) as chief of military intelligence.28 By the late 1980s mounting political pressure and controversies over land ownership within Uganda made it politically unfeasible for Museveni to support the Rwandan refugees. As a result,

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

83

many Rwandan Tutsis in the NRA began organizing a parallel army intent on invading Rwanda. Prior to the October 1990 invasion of Rwanda, RPF troops assembled at a soccer stadium just north of the Rwandan border where they distributed equipment provided by the Ugandan army. Ugandan army officers and other sources confirmed that “Uganda had been a steady source of light arms, ammunition, uniforms, batteries, food and gasoline” for the RPF throughout the conflict.29 While Museveni formally denounced the RPF’s invasion, and claimed that the hardware had been stolen from the NRA, throughout the conflict Paul Kagame “traveled frequently and openly to Kampala to meet with foreign diplomats, reporters and RPF supporters within the NRA,” and there exists considerable evidence that RPF units routinely camped without harassment for long periods on the Ugandan side of the border.30 In addition to receiving material support from the Ugandan government, or sympathetic elements within it, the RPF received military training in the US. Kagame and other RFP personnel had received training at the US Army Command and Staff College (CGSC) in Leavenworth, Kansas.31 It remains unclear whether US military support to the RPF extended beyond training members as part of the Ugandan army. However, the fact that the RPF operated with support from the Ugandan government, which works closely with the US, offers considerable reason to assume that the RPF invasion of Rwanda was at least sanctioned, if not fully supported, by the US. Mahmood Mamdani makes a stronger argument, stating that the US did intervene in Rwanda, through a proxy. That proxy was the RPF, backed up by entire units from the Uganda Army. The green light was given to the RPF, whose commanding officer, Paul Kagame, had recently returned from training in the US [. . .] Instead of using its resources and influence to bring about a political solution to the civil war, and then strengthen it, the US signalled to one of the parties that it could pursue victory with impunity. This unilateralism was part of what led to the disaster, and that is the real lesson of Rwanda.32 Since the end of the 1994 genocide the US government has maintained a close military and political alliance with Paul Kagame and the RPF, and

84

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

the training offered by the US continues to shape regional military operations. For example, many members of the RPF involved in the 1996 invasion of Zaire were trained by Green Berets from the 3rd Special Forces Group (Fort Bragg).33 Uganda and the US were not the only countries with tacit (or possibly direct) military interventions in Rwanda during the early 1990s. France actively provided military and economic assistance to the Rwandan government prior to, and throughout, the conflict. After a brief flirtation with a foreign policy based on “human rights, fair trade and democracy,” by 1990 France had renewed its “well-established neo-colonial strategy” in Africa – a strategy that hinged on “[p]ersonal and financial dealings with francophone dictators and military intervention.”34 Its military alliance with the government of Rwanda dates back to the 1970s when France began actively expanding its sphere of influence into Rwanda on the heels of the Belgian disengagement following independence. France offered Rwanda considerable “financial and military guarantees” as incentives to bring the country into its sphere of influence.35 By the early 1990s France was greatly concerned about “Anglophone encroachment in Africa” and, as such, saw Rwanda as a particularly important country owing to its location on “a political fault-line between francophone and anglophone east Africa.”36 On the day of the RPF’s invasion, Habyarimana called Mitterrand requesting military support. The president’s son JeanChristophe Mitterrand, head of the Africa Office and personal friend of Habyarimana, assured the Rwandan president that troops would be sent.37 Two days later the French government dispatched 300 paratroopers stationed in the Central African Republic to Rwanda, where – in addition to following their stated mandate of evacuating French residents – they “provided arms, guarded the Kigali airport, set up communications facilities and artillery for the Rwandan military, maintained roadblocks, flew helicopters and supervised the interrogation of RPF prisoners.”38 The presence of French troops is widely credited with turning back the initial RPF invasion on the outskirts of Kigali in 1990. By February 1993 France had roughly 700 troops and 150 military advisers in Rwanda, and was actively providing the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) considerable military hardware.39 France also unilaterally deployed soldiers to Rwanda during the summer of 1994 as part of Operation Turquoise. The stated aim was to clear enclaves in order to provide protection for victims of mass killing.

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

85

However, this intervention served to bolster the flagging Rwandan Armed Forces. When French troops landed in Kigali they found a wildly supportive government and French flags prominently displayed throughout the city, including on military vehicles. In a number of instances this fact proved “particularly unfortunate because Tutsi, seeing the French flag, would come out of hiding only to be immediately killed by FAR soldiers or the militiamen.”40 In addition, Operation Turquoise not only failed to protect Tutsis from further violence but also served as the rear defense protecting the retreating genocidaires, many of whom were French political allies, as they fled into the refugee camps in Goma.41 Situating the genocide within the context of a regional and geopolitical struggle between Uganda, the US, and the RPF against Rwanda and France makes it possible to understand the genocide not as a spontaneous uprising that could be intervened upon to stop. Rather, the genocide was the result – a desperate end game – within a general civil war that included Western countries on both sides. It is safe to say that the civil war taking place within Rwanda during the early 1990s was actively sanctioned and materially supported by Western powers, either directly or by proxy. Foreign intervention in Rwanda during the early 1990s, however, was not limited to military intervention.

Economic Intervention In addition to military interventions, a number of Western powers were actively intervening in Rwanda economically. During the late 1980s and early 1990s Rwanda was a darling among the foreign aid community. For example, between 1989 and 1990 foreign aid amounted to 11.4 percent of Rwanda’s GNP (or $80 per capita), making Rwanda “one of the most aided countries in the world.”42 Peter Uvin has meticulously demonstrated how the prevalence of Western aid profoundly shaped Rwandan economic and political institutions, exacerbated existing structural violence, and even built much of the infrastructure that made genocide possible. Foreign governments, as well as Western lending institutions and nongovernmental organizations, were so involved in Rwanda during the 1990s that “the development enterprise dominated almost all relations between Rwanda and the rest of the world.”43 Western governments also intervened in Rwanda through the major international trade and financial institutions governing the world

86

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

economy. Indirectly, the US and other Western countries impacted the Rwandan economy in 1989 when they agreed to torpedo the International Coffee Agreement, resulting in the dramatic collapse of the price of coffee and sending the Rwandan economy into a tailspin.44 During the ensuing economic crisis, a number of major financial institutions intervened to assist the faltering Rwandan economy. The World Bank and IMF made large loans to the Habyarimana government. However, these funds were not spent on rejuvenating the obliterated coffee economy but rather on purchasing the military hardware used to arm the rapidly expanding military and paramilitary groups. During the early 1990s the cash-strapped Rwandan government spent $112 million to arm the population and bought weapons from France, Egypt, and South Africa. France’s national bank, Credit Lyonnais, provided the credit guarantees that made many of these transactions possible. The Habyarimana government received the foreign currency to purchase these weapons when the IMF and World Bank deposited the loans into the Banque Nationale du Rwanda. These loans ended in 1993 when it became clear that the government had abandoned its expressed intentions of using the money for development projects and debt restructuring. However, the government’s surplus funds held in foreign bank accounts were never frozen, and, as a result, internationally donated hard currency continued to fund the preparations for the genocide.45 The Rwandan government was easily able to use its development loans for armaments by manipulating bank records, doctoring invoices, reselling imported gasoline, and diverting development purchases like vehicles, gasoline, and other supplies toward the military.46 In short, the presence of aid agencies as well as international financial institutions created the economic conditions in which the genocide was possible. Without their presence, neither the government troops nor the paramilitary groups would have had the infrastructure and weaponry to conduct the mass killings. It is this observation that led Uvin to conclude that “all development aid constitutes a form of political intervention.”47

Political Intervention During the later stages of the civil war the US and other Western countries also intervened politically, using their political and economic

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

87

power to pressure the Rwandan government to democratize its political system and negotiate a settlement to end the civil war. Faced with a crippled economy and a protracted civil war, President Habyarimana found himself under international pressure to sign a peace accord with the RPF. The peace agreement the parties eventually agreed upon, the Arusha Accords, was highly unfavorable to the hardline elements within the Habyarimana government. However, despite its unpopularity, Habyarimana nonetheless agreed to a power-sharing government in which the ruling party only received five out of 21 cabinet posts, and the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) – a hardline political party with close alliances with the Habyarimana government – was excluded from government completely.48 Many Western countries used Habyarimana’s vulnerable economic and political position to pressure him to make the considerable political concessions. For example, over the course of a number of “donor roundtables (held in Paris), cease-fire agreements and peace talks,” international backers of the Rwandan government made it apparent that the “release of multilateral and bilateral loans” would be “conditional upon implementing a process of so-called ‘democratization’ under the tight surveillance of the donor community.”49 By 1991 France began looking for ways to pull its troops out of Rwanda without jeopardizing Habyarimana. It actively pushed for the Arusha Accords, and the inclusion of the UN peacekeeping force, while also threatening to remove its troops unilaterally if Habyarimana refused to sign the treaty.50 This was also true for the US, which issued a State Department directive in early 1993 stating that “the continuation of US bilateral aid” would be “made conditional on good behavior in policy reform as well as progress in the pursuit of democracy.”51 It seems clear that Habyarimana would most likely have rejected these terms if Francois Mitterrand’s “personal emissaries” had not insisted he accept them.52 In addition to using their political and economic power to encourage the Rwandan government to accept a domestically untenable peace agreement, Western powers entered the negotiation process on behalf of their own interests. The US, for example, actively sought to secure a more advantageous position for the RPF, while the French did the same for the Rwandan government. Due to the entrenched interests playing out during the negotiation process, it became evident that the Arusha negotiations were an extension of the military and economic geopolitical

88

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

interventions taking place between the US and France. Collins makes this point when he writes that “[i]ndividual Western powers [. . .] were closely involved in the political reforms which prefigured war and invasion and the subsequent Arusha peace process,” and, given that these political interventions resulted in a great destabilization of the country, “far from non-intervention in Rwanda, the major Western powers shaped the context in which the Rwandan state disintegrated and wholesale slaughter ensued.”53 Rather than a story of a failure to intervene, the genocide in Rwanda should be understood as taking place within a context of considerable foreign intervention. While international actors were not solely responsible for the genocide, it is quite apparent that their involvement in the civil war helped create the conditions in which a significant and highly armed faction of Rwandans began to see genocide as a viable military and political solution.

Making Peace With Disintervention Understanding the genocide in Rwanda as always an international conflict – an event made possible because of considerable foreign intervention (rather than the absence of it) – creates an opening to reassess the role Western countries play in the continuing violence that stems from the Arab Spring. One possible lesson learned from the history of the genocide in Rwanda is that greater emphasis might be placed on disintervention. Adam Branch writes that rather than seeing the genocide in Rwanda “as the product of the failure of the West to intervene, we should look at the Western interventions that were already occurring in Rwanda that helped set the stage for the genocide.”54 Starting from this point “the lesson of Rwanda for the West [should] not be that more Western intervention is needed” but rather that “constructive Western disintervention is needed so that ongoing Western intervention does not unintentionally or intentionally set the stage for political violence.”55 Compare, for example, how Western countries eagerly endorsed intervention in Libya using the legacy of genocide in Rwanda, while African countries resolutely rejected such policies. The UN’s 2001 “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine codified the “right” of foreign (and we can assume Western) powers to intervene to protect civilians from their own government.56 In 2011 the Gaddafi regime became the first

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

89

government in a decade deemed in violation of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. However, the international debate around whether Western countries should intervene in Libya’s civil war was much more mixed. Not only did five of the world’s major economic and political powers – Brazil, Germany, India, China, and Russia – refuse to vote for the UN resolution granting the right to intervene in Libya, but no African country supported the intervention. Instead, Western powers had to seek regional authorization by turning to the League of Arab States, completely ignoring the African Union all together.57 This is not surprising given that the countries endorsing intervention in Africa were all former colonial powers, and the US and Europe had a long history of supporting the same dictators that protestors across the Arab world were sacrificing their lives to overthrow. Furthermore, at various moments African leaders had historically turned to Gaddafi to support their anticolonial struggles (often when they most needed weapons to counter those provided to colonial governments by Western countries). It is not surprising, therefore, that many African leaders saw the desire to intervene in Libya as suspect – Western powers were once again choosing their targets selectively. For example, during the Arab Spring Western powers intervened in the name of protecting Libyan citizens from military attacks but shied away from doing so in Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, or Coˆte d’Ivoire, all of which experienced similar violence.58 Furthermore, the deployment of Rwanda Remorse in the case of Libya helped obscure the fact that, in many ways, Western countries had, until very recently, been actively courting Gaddafi as a regional political, economic, and military ally. Since 2003 Western countries had embraced Gaddafi for joining the US in its “War against Terror,” voluntarily abandoning his chemical and nuclear weapons programs, paying restitution for the Pan Am 103 and UTA bombings, and signing lucrative oil contracts with Petro-Canada. Gaddafi was recognized by the Scottish government, who released Pan Am bomber al-Megrahi from prison, and was visited by Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, and Canadian prime minister Paul Martin.59 As part of a public relations plan crafted by a consulting company with links to Harvard Business School, Gaddafi even became a major patron of the London School of Economics’ Center for the Study of Global Governance (directed by David Held). The language of Rwanda Remorse, however, worked to swiftly undo the well-crafted image of Gaddafi as a prodigal son returning to the pacific

90

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

and inclusive fold of the “international community,” condemning him instead as simply a genocidal killer: the one-dimensional personification of Evil incarnate. As Western countries seek to redefine the terms of intervention within a post-Arab Spring world, the language of Rwanda Remorse remains popular. However, as seen during the civil war in Syria (2011– 17), Rwanda Remorse only becomes politically powerful when the state already has an interest in intervention. The Obama administration, which had just a year and a half previously justified intervention in Libya, declined to use the language of Rwanda Remorse to justify robust intervention in Syria. In conclusion, academics have a responsibility to critically interrogate the ways in which US policies toward Rwanda have been interpreted in ways that reinforce a highly ideological and ahistorical perception of Western intervention in Africa, the Arab world, and elsewhere. It will take many years to fully learn the lasting effects of US-supported NATO strikes in Libya. But, in the short run, it seems that this policy has been a total calamity, resulting in the collapse of the state, the loss of tens of thousands of lives, and protracted regional instability. Contrast the example of Libya with that of Tunisia, where reconciliation and redress was handled domestically and without foreign intervention. It remains important to honestly confront the fact that no foreign intervention is selfless, or moral, or even successful. The use of violence is always destructive, messy, and deeply embedded in political power struggles. Furthermore, the governments being called upon to intervene are often not simply altruistic bystanders but themselves deeply invested parties. The language of Rwanda Remorse, in particular, facilitates the ignoring of such complexity, presenting intervention as simply the application of force for self-evidently and disinterested humanitarian outcomes. Those disgusted by the prevalence of violence in the world should be skeptical of calls for the deployment of further violence to solve the world’s problems. Demands for military disintervention might be the first step toward creating more just, imaginative, and anti-ideological strategies for building a more peaceful world. The demands, passions, brilliance, creativity, joy, and inspiration of the Arab Spring cannot be buried under more and more calls for violence and bloodshed. It might be true that 5,000 foreign troops could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Rwanda in 1994. This claim, however, needs to be

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

91

measured against the recognition that US and other Western countries were also simultaneously responsible for creating the conditions for this genocide. An honest conversation about intervention, therefore, must look this history straight in the face – and not simply (and ideologically) assume that the extreme violence experienced today would be lessened if only the US showed more resolve for intervention. The US and Europe are already authors of a long and steady commitment to foreign intervention – and the outcomes, with some exceptions, have been largely disastrous. A more peaceful world can be built, but not by asking how foreign governments can intervene to address individual crises as they emerge. Rather, the colonial powers – including the US – need to be remade into countries where a desire for cooperation and mutual aid among nations replaces intervention. Rather than expressing remorse for the “failure” to intervene in Rwanda, the US and its Western allies might instead begin with public expressions of remorse for the massive death tolls that have resulted directly from their long history of military, economic, and political interventions in countries around the world.

Notes 1. Bill Clinton, “Remarks to the people of Rwanda,” Miller Center, March 25, 1998. Available at http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-4602 (accessed September 7, 2016). 2. Barack H. Obama, “Nobel lecture: a just and lasting peace,” Nobel Prize Committee, December 10, 2009. Available at https://www.nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html (accessed September 7, 2016). 3. See, for example: Fernando R. Teso´n, “Don’t underestimate the costs of inaction,” Reason 46/8 (2015), p. 34; “We have a responsibility to protect the Yazidis of Iraq,” New Statesman, August 14, 2014. Available at http://www. newstatesman.com/politics/2014/08/leader-we-have-responsibility-protectyazidis-iraq (accessed December 6, 2016); Nicholas Kristof, “Obama’s worst mistake,” New York Times, August 11, 2016. Available at http://www.nytimes. com/2016/08/11/opinion/obamas-worst-mistake.html?_r¼0 (accessed December 6, 2016). 4. Alison Pargeter, Libya: the Rise and Fall of Gaddafi (New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2012), Chapter 8. 5. Quoted in ibid., p. 234. 6. Quoted in Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Still crusading, but now on the inside,” New York Times, March 29, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/ 30/world/30power.html (accessed December 6, 2016).

92

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

7. Quoted in Christopher S. Chivvis, Toppling Gaddafi: Libya and the Limits of Liberal Intervention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 38. 8. Quoted in Stephen Dinan, “White House: ‘no mercy’ is not a doctrine,” Washington Times, March 28, 2011. Available at http://www.washingtontimes. com/news/2011/mar/28/action-on-no-mercy-threat-not-a-doctrine/ (accessed December 6, 2016). 9. Paul Kagame, “Rwandans know why Gaddafi must be stopped,” Times, March 23, 2011. Available at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/arti cle2956968.ece (accessed December 6, 2016). 10. David Jackson, “One reason for Obama’s decision on Libya: Rwanda,” The Oval, USA Today, March 24, 2011. Available at http://content.usatoday.com/ communities/theoval/post/2011/03/one-reason-for-obamas-decision-on-libyarwanda/1#.V83op7VWebI (accessed September 7, 2016). 11. Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). See also, Samantha Power, “Bystanders to genocide,” Atlantic, September 2001. Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/archive/2001/09/bystanders-to-genocide/304571/ (accessed September 7, 2016). 12. Power, “Bystanders to genocide.” 13. Quoted in Helene Cooper and Steven Lee Myers, “Obama takes hard line with Libya after shift by Clinton,” New York Times, March 18, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html (accessed December 6, 2016). 14. For comprehensive overviews of the genocide in Rwanda, see Alison L. Des Forges, “Leave None to Tell the Story”: Genocide in Rwanda, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Human Rights Watch, 1999); David Newbury, “Understanding genocide,” African Studies Review 41/1 (1998), pp. 73– 97; Catharine Newbury, “Background to genocide: Rwanda,” Issue: a Journal of Opinion 23/2 (1995), pp. 12 – 17; Catharine Newbury and David Newbury, “A Catholic mass in Kigali: contested views of the genocide and ethnicity in Rwanda,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 33/2 – 3 (1999), pp. 292– 328; Ge´rard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis 1959–1994: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst & Company, 1995); Power, “A Problem from Hell,” Chapter 10; Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton; Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2001); Helen M. Hintjens, “Explaining the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Modern African Studies 37/2 (1999), pp. 241–86. 15. For accounts of the UN’s failure to stop the genocide, see Des Forges, “Leave None to Tell the Story,” pp. 595– 63; Rome´o Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: the Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003); Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: the United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: the Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London; New York, NY: Zed Books, 2000), Chapters 8 – 11.

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

93

16. Jamie Frederic Metzl, “Rwandan genocide and the international law of radio jamming,” American Joural of International Law 91/4 (1997), pp. 628 – 51. 17. Power, “A Problem from Hell,” pp. 379– 80. 18. Ibid., pp. 359 – 60. 19. Alan J. Kuperman, “Rwanda in retrospect,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000. Available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/rwanda/2000-0101/rwanda-retrospect (accessed December 6, 2016). 20. Clinton, “Remarks to the people of Rwanda.” 21. Bill Clinton, My Life (New York, NY: Knopf, 2004), p. 593. 22. “Belgian apology to Rwanda,” BBC News, April 7, 2000. Available at http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/705402.stm (accessed September 7, 2016). 23. Sarah Boesveld, “Jean acknowledges Canada’s inaction during Rwandan genocide,” The Globe and Mail, April 21, 2010. 24. Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by the President on the 20th commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda,” White House, April 6, 2014. Available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/06/statement-president-20th-commemoration-genocide-rwanda (accessed September 7, 2016). 25. Recent examples include the US intervention in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In each instance the invaded country experienced greater levels of instability, violence, repression, and poverty than before US intervention. 26. This chapter uses RPF to refer to both the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its military wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). 27. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, Chapter 6; Ge´rard Prunier, “The Rwandan Patriotic Front,” in C. Clapham (ed.), African Guerrillas (Oxford, UK: James Currey, 1998). 28. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, pp. 173–4. 29. Human Rights Watch, “Arming Rwanda: the arms trade and human rights abuses in the Rwandan war,” Human Rights Watch Arms Project 6/1 (1994), p. 20. 30. Ibid.; Ogenga Otunnu, “An historical analysis of the invasion by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA),” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999). 31. Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, 2nd edn (Quebec: Global Research, 2003), p. 11. It should be noted that Prunier argues that Kagame’s presence in the US was “brief and inconsequential” and should not be understood as a sign of American support. Prunier, “The Rwandan Patriotic Front,” p. 130n.40. 32. Mahmood Mamdani, “The politics of naming: genocide, civil war, insurgency,” London Review of Books, March 8, 2007. Available at http://www.lrb.co.uk/ v29/n05/mahmood-mamdani/the-politics-of-naming-genocide-civil-warinsurgency (accessed December 6, 2016). See also, Mahmood Mamdani, Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009), pp. 67 – 8.

94

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

33. Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty, p. 117. 34. Andrew Wallis, Silent Accomplice: the Untold Story of France’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide (London; New York, NY: I.B.Tauris, 2014), p. 232. 35. Melvern, A People Betrayed, p. 24. 36. Ibid. For more on the cultural and military reasons for France’s continued support of the Habyarimana government, see Ge´rard Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis 1959– 1994, pp. 100 – 10. See also, Daniela Kroslak, The French Betrayal of Rwanda (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), Chapter 3. 37. Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis 1959 –1994, pp. 100– 1; Wallis, Silent Accomplice, pp. 24 – 5. 38. Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1998), p. 16. The Belgian government also sent troops but focused their attention on evacuating foreign nationals. In an effort to “block the advance of the Ugandan-backed RPF,” Mobutu also sent 500 troops, but the government of Rwanda requested they be withdrawn after it became clear they had participated in looting. Ibid., p. 17. 39. Agne`s Callamard, “French policy in Rwanda,” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 159, 177n.13. 40. Ge´rard Prunier, “Ope´ration Turquoise: a humanitarian escape from a political dead end,” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), p. 292. 41. Wallis, Silent Accomplice, chapters 7– 8. 42. Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: the Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998), pp. 40– 1. 43. Ibid., p. 3. 44. Isaac A. Kamola, “The global coffee economy and the production of genocide in Rwanda,” Third World Quarterly 28/3 (2007), pp. 571 – 92. 45. Melvern, A People Betrayed, pp. 66 – 7; Human Rights Watch, “Arming Rwanda.” 46. Melvern, A People Betrayed, pp. 66 – 7. 47. Uvin, Aiding Violence, p. 232. 48. Bruce Jones, “The Arusha peace process,” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 131 – 6. 49. Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty, p. 105. 50. Callamard, “French policy in Rwanda,” pp. 161 – 2. 51. Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty, p. 105. 52. Callamard, “French policy in Rwanda,” p. 163. 53. Barrie Collins, “New wars and old wars? The lessons of Rwanda,” in D. Chandler (ed.), Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 159.

THE ARAB SPRING, US INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

95

54. Adam Branch, Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 246. 55. Ibid. 56. Thomas G. Weiss, “RtoP alive and well after Libya,” Ethics and International Affiars 25/3 (2011), pp. 1 – 6. 57. Siba N. Grovogui, “Looking beyond spring for the season: an African perspective on the world order after the Arab revolt,” Globalizations 8/5 (2011), pp. 567– 72. 58. See DiMaggio, Chapter 2, this volume. 59. Jeremy Kinsman, “Libya: a case for humanitarian intervention,” Policy Options, October 1, 2011, pp. 83– 4. Available at http://policyoptions.irpp.org/ magazines/the-new-normal-majority-government/libya-a-case-for-humanitarianintervention/ (accessed December 7, 2016).

CHAPTER 4 WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS, FIVE YEARS AFTER THE UPRISING1 Michaelle Browers

There was, not so long ago, a rich debate in Middle Eastern politics over moderation – what can foster it? Inclusion? Cross-ideological cooperation? More recently there seems to be what might be termed “moderation-thesis fatigue,” as was well articulated by Jillian Schwedler, a scholar who has perhaps done more than anyone to hone the analytical power of this idea.2 The fascination with moderation has a long history in political imaginaries and social science. Political theory, dating back at least to Aristotle and found in Islamic thought since its very beginning, has extolled the importance of middles (the middle class, ideological moderates, mediators to dialogue and reconciliation processes). More recently, political scientists have drawn upon the notion of liminality to explore the roles and potentials of in-between spaces, periods, and actors for political transformations. Middling or liminar individuals and groups of individuals have been positively associated with political stability, democratic transitions, democratic consolidation, civic virtue, social trust, and reconciliation processes. Five years after the uprising in Egypt, many commentators bemoaned the “collapse of the Egyptian center”3 and the attending “pervasive distrust” and “wall of fear” among social groups in

98

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

the country.4 These are precisely the types of problems that much social science research looks to “moderates” of various sorts to solve. Rather than asking about moderation when so many countries in the Arab region have experienced instability, discontent, and deep social divisions, we might inquire more immediately as to the fate of those actors the literature has already highlighted (even celebrated) as moderate: How have they fared, what role have they played, and what role might they yet play? Further, I want to suggest a rethinking of why they were celebrated in the first place, not just to offer a better description of moderation but, ultimately, to argue for abandoning the term altogether – by focusing on the go-between, in-between action performed by those individuals we often label as moderates, a category of action which I suggest we re-describe as liminal. After reviewing the literature in which notions of moderation or middles are doing some work and articulating a notion of liminality that draws from what I consider to be the best work on this topic, I focus on Islamist liminars in Egypt. The limitation of this study to Islamist liminars results from both knowledge and space constraints but is maintained with the strong conviction that we must study those individuals playing similar roles as liminars in other ideological corners. I will further divide these liminars along two lines, one of middling intellectuals and one of middling activists. I acknowledge, with Gramsci, that “all men are potentially intellectuals” but that “when one distinguishes between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, one is referring in reality only to the immediate social function of the professional category of the intellectuals, that is, one has in mind the direction in which their specific professional activity is weighted.”5 My overall argument is that liminality and liminars are vitally important to political change. While efforts aimed at “transitional justice” and “democracy promotion” seem to have some idea as to the importance of such figures, most attempts to engage them prove counterproductive. These are undertaken with too much concern for whether groups or individuals are “moderate” or “democratic,” and insufficient attention to their ongoing liminality as gobetweens in the contested space of Egyptian politics.

Rethinking Moderation, Locating Liminality Social and political analysis of moderates, middles, and liminars is vast and varied – and, occasionally, contradictory – such that one must

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS

99

acknowledge that oftentimes those who are assigning social and political value to middles are often talking about quite different things or attributing different values and significances to similar things. This is seen most clearly in the association of middles with stability and change. The former emphasizes those actors (typically identified as the middle class or ideological moderates) who stabilize by virtue of their stake in the status quo or their possession of ideas that valorize stability, encourage measured reform, and discourage radical change. This is perhaps the classical view of middles. My own work6 leans toward the latter sense in locating alternative visions among various in-between and go-between individuals who think, act, dialogue, and build connections across ideological divides. Many of these individuals were important players in the growth of protest activity that brought us the Arab uprisings and the overthrow of heads of state in a number of countries, including Egypt. I am not alone in drawing attention to Egypt’s middle actors and moderates,7 and many post-2011 works highlight the importance of liminal spaces and liminal actors in explaining the uprisings.8 Mark Levine suggests it was the projection of a sort of “revolutionary liminality,” that is, political engagement that unlike liminality in “normal times,” “does not revolve back to every-day life” during the Arab uprisings: “those undergoing such transformations are not reintegrated into the fabric of community in their changed state; rather, their changed state becomes the impetus and vehicle for the initiation of the broader transformation of society.”9 Much of the recent work on “democratic moderation” is largely premised on bringing together the stabilizing and transformative notions of liminal actors: in defining moderation as a process of change “from more exclusionary practices (of the sort that view all alternative perspectives as illegitimated and thus dangerous)” to one that allows for participation, inclusion, and engagement of a wider range of actors.10 For example, much of the literature on democratic moderation focuses on those actors’ willingness to work within, rather than to challenge, the existing political arrangements. Those who posit what has been termed “the inclusion-moderation hypothesis” hold that “political actors will become more moderate if they are allowed to participate in legitimate competitive political processes.”11 The tensions between these two claims in many respects turn on the two levels of moderation that are often being dealt with at once: regime

100

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

moderation and opposition moderation. Jason Brownlee’s analysis to some extent brings together both ideas and both levels of analysis in demonstrating that the existence of an opposition that demonstrates a credible commitment to some measure of security for the vital interests of outgoing actors (that is, a moderate opposition) is not in itself a sufficient guarantee that incumbents will compromise some of their interests for those of the opposition (thus, proving inclusive). Rather, this form of moderation on the part of the regime depends on factors external to the moderates themselves. Being bolstered by “western support or a sturdy repressive regime” can make not compromising to opposition less costly, on the one hand, and threatening popular protests or economic collapse can make compromise “the least unpalatable of several unappealing choices,” on the other hand.12 One might further argue that whether an opposition bolsters or challenges regime stability – or, in other words, whether an opposition proves loyal or revolutionary – depends to some extent on factors external to the opposition itself. Being bolstered by Western support or mass protests can make not compromising with the regime less costly, on the one hand, and the threat of a sturdy repressive regime can make compromise more palatable, on the other hand. One of the early theorists of liminality, Victor Turner, analyzed how liminal practices and beliefs can undermine the very distinctions social structures rely upon.13 Anne Norton, who perhaps is the first to explicitly theorize liminality in political science, maintains that “liminars become most active and powerful when they recognize not only their common experience of exploitation and subordination but also the formal resemblance of that experience to the experience of liminal groups subordinated in other structural relations.”14 Some work has analyzed the way in which various “intervening actors” (predominantly governmental and international agencies) undertake strategies aimed at converting conflictual spaces into “peaceful spaces” and, in the process, create liminal spaces. Audra Mitchell and Liam Kelly describe liminal spaces as “deterritorialized spaces whose status and ownership is indeterminate, in which the right of access and use is unclear, and in which the conditions created by constant and always incomplete transformation are used to justify intensive securitization and modes of control.”15 That is, these spaces can contribute to reconciliation efforts but can also have an effect beyond their original intention. Mitchell and

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 101

Kelly note how sites of development in North Belfast became spaces of protest, where graffiti projects messages of protest, for example.16 Similarly, Lisa Smirl points to the way in which humanitarian reconstruction efforts after large-scale national disasters create “liminal,” “auxiliary spaces” through the physical presence of aid workers and the new lived spaces set up to support them. These spaces can have unintended consequences, some potentially negative (e.g. exacerbating inequalities) and potentially transformative, even emancipatory (when it, for example, contributes a space for dialogue among combatants and for consideration of better alternatives to the status quo).17 Thus, liminality has been associated with both reconciliation and emancipatory politics, marking an in-between that allows for a mixing and mingling of things usually kept separate, a zone of contestation and transition that is open to alternative possibilities. Both aspects are found among those actors that scholars of Arab politics have highlighted as “moderate” or “middle.” Many recent studies, including my own, have drawn attention to the wasatiyya (variously termed moderate, centrist, midstream) trend.18 Raymond William Baker, who has perhaps written more about this than anyone, defines the wasatiyya as a loose network of individuals who share a “commitment to rethink Islam and engage the world constructively in its new terms” and demonstrate a willingness to learn from the experiences of others, engage in self-criticism, and control extremist elements.19 The figures analyzed below often identify with (and are even more often identified with) this trend. Ultimately, I think we do best to abandon the language of middles, centers, and moderates altogether. We cannot define moderates ideologically without making value judgements about extremes and continuums. Ideological centers too often tend to be found among status quo and conservative forces. It may well be the case that ideological middles are simply “on the fence,” that is, disengaged, unable to make up their minds, or intellectually lazy. Neither, do I wish to confuse that which I seek with either a centralization of ideas or of power.20 The middle actors of so much of this literature are more interested in change, reform, and progress, and are distinctive for their enthusiasm for acting as moderators (or mediators), characteristics that are better described as liminal. I share Carrie Wickham’s conclusion that applying such terms like “moderate” to

102

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

large and highly variegated groups (like the Muslim Brotherhood) is nonsensical, but I maintain that one can identify networks of individuals who are linked by shared characteristics: liminars are those who seek to engage others across various divides.21 It is this that can make them important facilitators and mediators for political change. They are sometimes associated with groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (or April 6 or the Revolutionary Socialists), yet such figures demonstrate not group-think but a significant measure of independence of thought and action – independence that often puts them at odd with parties (and governments).

Egypt’s Islamist Liminars There are two prominent variants of Islamist liminars in Egypt. The first consists of a segment of the so-called “middle generation” of the Muslim Brotherhood – more a political generation in a sociological sense than age-cohorts – sometimes self-styled as the reformist brothers or ikhwan islahiyyun.22 In the 1970s, many of these figures were involved in the creation of al-jama‘a al-islamiyya and active in the Islamist takeover of many student unions before joining the Brotherhood around 1975 to 1977, including ‘Abd alMunim Abu al-Futuh (b. 1951), Issam al-Ariyan (b. 1953), and Abu al-‘Ala al-Madi (b. 1958). Pargeter points out one of the key differences between the student activists who came to the group during this time: [T]his generation was used to working openly and was unconstrained by the same sense of secrecy and fear that characterized those leaders who had spent so many years in prison [. . .] [and] in that they sought to take the Ikhwan in a new direction, moving away somewhat from ideological and theological issues to focus on more practical socio-economic challenges such as poverty or corruption.23 Many of the leading reformist brothers either left or were driven from the Muslim Brotherhood. Prior to the Egyptian uprising, some left with Madi to form the Wasat party in 1996. Others had their membership suspended when they worked with other groups in the course of the

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 103

uprising or became part of the handful of dissident parties (al-Nahda, al-Riyada, al-Tayyar al-Misri, al-Salam wa al-Tanmiyya) established in the run-up to Egypt’s 2011 parliamentary elections. Some, like Ariyan and Muhammad al-Biltaji (b. 1963), remained within the Muslim Brotherhood but were in Tahrir Square and working with other groups ahead of their organization. ‘Abd al-Munim Abu al-Futuh, one of the few from the middle generation who rose to the level of the Guidance Bureau (serving there from 1987 to 2009 when he was edged out by more conservative, traditional forces), remained within the Brotherhood until 2011, preferring to reform from within. He finally left (or was expelled) to run for president when the Brotherhood claimed it would not seek the presidency – and other members left with him. A number of these figures were vocal critics of policies that took place or continued under the Morsi presidency. Gamal Heshmat (b. 1955), who was part of the generation that came to the Muslim Brotherhood for al-jama‘a al-islamiyya in the 1970s and was well known as an outspoken anti-corruption MP under Mubarak, continued in the same vein as a Freedom and Justice Party MP. In February 2013 he called for an investigation into recent cases of detention, kidnapping, and torture by the state security forces and the cessation of the policy of trying civilians in military courts.24 Other former Brothers criticized Morsi directly. Reformist (former) Brother Haytham Abu Khalil asserted in February 2013 that the political crisis in Egypt was “a result of a floundering presidency” that was taking its orders directly from the Brotherhood (particularly deputy supreme guide Khayrat al-Shatir) and lacked the “planning expertise” needed to govern effectively.25 Some went so far as to call for Morsi to step down and for the holding of early elections for a new president, though they have also been important voices in criticizing the military’s removal of Morsi. Abu al-Futuh (and his Strong Egypt party) initially supported Tamarrud (Rebellion), which led to the campaign seeking 15 million signatures to a petition for early presidential elections. The plan was to present the petition to Morsi on the first anniversary of his inauguration on June 30, 2013. However, Abu al-Futuh immediately opposed the military’s use of this popular movement to oust Morsi and take power. Thereafter, he helped form the Third Square (al-maydan al-thalith) along with an ideologically wide range of actors and groups, a space (a liminal space, certainly) of protest to take place in Sphinx square, situated outside of both the military

104

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

organized protests in Tahrir Square calling for a crackdown on “terrorism” and the Islamist protests organized by Morsi’s supporters in Rabi‘a al-Adawiyya square. Despite the many challenges from within and without, many of these reformist brothers were elected to Egypt’s post-revolution parliament. But their foray into formal political institutions was short-lived as that body was dissolved by the supreme constitutional court (whose judges were appointed by Mubarak) in June 2012. Although a Muslim Brother was ultimately elected to the presidency, Muhammad Morsi was no liminal actor. And perhaps too few scholars have observed what many former Muslim Brothers from this trend have reported in writings over the past two years: that hardliners used their electoral success and their access to state institutions during their one year in power to purge their ranks of those internal dissidents they have been struggling against since the 1990s.26 What does it tell about the Muslim Brotherhood that, in power, they closed ranks and sought dialogue with the military rather than those outside their organization who contributed to their entry into politics? How might the Morsi administration have fared if it had taken a more inclusive approach, reaching out and listening rather than trying to marginalize these reformists? Certainly those critical voices continued to speak to the Muslim Brotherhood over the course of their trials and tribulations in the post-revolutionary context. Teti and Gervasio noted shortly after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and before the election of Muhammad Morsi that the Muslim Brotherhood had already “come to be seen by many activists – not least several amongst its own youth movement – as primarily interested in riding the wave of the January uprising in order to achieve a compromise with SCAF, rather than displaying any allegiance to the Uprising’s principles.”27 The youth voice was perhaps first heard as a distinctive force with the announcement of Sahya Ikhwaniyya (Brotherhood Shout), led by the architect Dr. Muhammad al-Hadidi, a youth group formed in protest to the Brotherhood’s decision to nominate Khayrat al-Shatir as a presidential candidate (and after Shatir’s disqualification, the nomination of Muhammad Morsi). The group, which included about 20 young members, protested outside the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, calling for the Muslim Brotherhood to honor its promise not to field a candidate and to cease its practice of dismissing members who joined

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 105

other political parties or supported other candidates. Hadidi, Shatir’s son-in-law released a statement in the magazine al-Shabab, which was reproduced on the group’s Facebook page and on al-Ahram newspaper’s website, explaining that the group’s aim was not to oppose Shatir or support Abu al-Futuh but to assert the right of every member of the group to make their own decision. He further claimed that this stance was not in contradiction to their oath to the Brotherhood, according to both the teachings of the group’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, and the recent ruling of Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in response to the youth’s inquiry on the matter.28 Many of these liminars were arrested in the wake of Morsi’s overthrow, including both Madi and Wasat Party deputy ‘Issam Sultan (b. 1964). The former was released in August 2015, while the latter still languished in prison as of 2016, along with all of the figures mentioned in this chapter who remained members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including ‘Ariyan and Biltaji. Abu al-Futuh’s Strong Egypt Party remained legal and has held on to an ideologically and generationally diverse array of political actors. The Egyptian Current Party, which was led by former Muslim Brotherhood youth members and some youth from April 6, merged with Strong Egypt in October 2014, providing hope that some liminars will not be so easily fractured by the regime’s divide-and-rule tactics. At the same time, Strong Egypt, like all opposition forces, has had many members arrested, cannot receive any funds, and finds itself regularly shut out of or attacked by the Egyptian media. In the lead-up to the fifth anniversary (at the time of writing) of the January 25 revolution, this group had shown itself to still be a voice for the opposition. But its ability to address the larger divides in Egyptian society – let alone to stave off the deepening divisions within the democratic opposition – remained limited by the political climate and repressive regime practices of the time. My previous work and that of many others has credited these individuals (along with other activists working outside of both state and traditional parties in Egypt) with doing much of the legwork of forging the broad-based oppositional politics in the lead-up to 2011. I also identified a second group of Islamist liminars who did much of the headwork. These figures consist of an older, more independent network of wasatiyya intellectuals – many of whom began their politicization in Arab nationalist or socialist movements but have come in one way or

106

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

another to be associated with an Islamist ethos. These include the law professor Kamal Abu al-Magd (b. 1930), the former Judge Tariq alBishri (b. 1933), the journalist Fahmi Huwaydi (b. 1937), the writer and lawyer Muhammad Salim al-‘Awwa (b. 1942), and the intellectual Muhammad al-‘Amara (b. 1931). Some consider Tariq al-Bishri’s October 2004 call for disobedience to an unjust regime as the manifesto that galvanized the opposition.29 His name quickly circulated as a potential consensus candidate for president. He declined, citing age, and Salim al-‘Awwa decided to run. Bishri was immediately tapped by the SCAF to lead the constitution writing process as the revolution’s first order of business. When Morsi put forth his infamous November 2012 constitutional decree that would have granted him broad powers as president, Bishri again spoke out critically. It is also worth noting that the “moderation” attributed to these liminars has been called into question. Other Egyptians often identify these figures as a cover for the Muslim Brotherhood. A very interesting rhetorical analysis by Jacob Høigilt concludes that the reason wasatiyya types have failed to contribute to “pluralistic public debate” is because the way in which they write is not conducive to reconciliation. Rather, he argues, there is a tendency toward the polemical or, as he says of Muhammad al-‘Amara, the main figure he studies: “[T]he rhetorical techniques are at times both manipulative and alienating, thus hindering contrastive debate with intellectual adversaries and even within the Islamist movement.”30 Though Høigilt is certainly right in much of his analysis, what he says about those associated with the wasatiyya trend could be said of a wide range of other groups in Egypt, including the “liberal” and “secular” polemicists about whose fate he shows particular concern. One must ask whether anyone in Egypt (or any prominent political actor in the current polarized environment in the US, for that matter) could meet the standard for debate Høigilt puts forth – a potential problem Høigilt notes at the end of the article.31 Høigilt admits to focusing on ‘Amara because he finds him to be a particularly “dedicated and aggressive polemicist,”32 though he also briefly analyzes Fahmi Huwaydi to show that ‘Amara is not an anomaly. A better point of comparison might be with either non-wasati Islamists or with the polemicists from other ideological strands in the country. Writing in 2010, Høigilt notes that in Egypt’s polarized political environment it is “liberals” who are “losing ground” and “liberal culture

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 107

[that] is the target.”33 One must ask whether things look the same from the vantage point of 2016 Egypt, after the overthrow of the Morsi government and where the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned (along with the April 6 youth movement). One might also ask whether these figures employ similar rhetorical strategies in criticizing a wide variety of ideological actors (Høigilt might have looked at Huwaydi’s critique of radical Islamists rather than his critique of secular figures and ideas). Their role as liminal thinkers and actors does not result in their agreement with those on opposite sides of an issue but on their commitment to engage even when disagreement exists. As Schwedler has noted, one must distinguish between “behavioral moderation” and “ideological moderation” and the concern that one might behave in moderate ways “but continue to hold core commitments that run counter to democratic norms.”34 While the former is easier to gauge than the latter, there is a considerable body of social science literature that demonstrates how individuals become increasingly extreme in their views when they exist in echo chambers, when they are in groups of like-minded others and have little exposure to alternative perspectives.35 In this respect, not only would we expect that individuals who sought out and engaged those with different perspectives would experience moderation, but that the existence of liminal individuals – go-betweens, brokers, mediators – would hold the potential to create spaces for or even draw others into similar experiences. Further, I suggest we approach what scholars are categorizing as moderate, centrist, or middle in the way in which Andrea Teti argues we approach democracy: “as a category of action, i.e. not merely a neutral analytical category, but one deployed and adapted by political actors in their concrete practices.”36 In my view, while studies of liminality are themselves a bit varied in their conceptualization and theorizing, the concept of liminality better captures the in-between – perhaps better: go-between – category of action that so many of these studies valorize while at once problematizing “the non-neutral relationship between theory and practice.”37 This allows us to consider the individuals discussed below not based upon the extent to which they exist along a continuum of preconceived notions of radical and moderate (or the liberal– illiberal categories that are implicit if not explicit in such

108

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

analyses) or the rendering of lacking or weak spaces and agents of liminality as a culturally specific problem (whether specific to Arab, Muslim, or Islamist). What sort of impact has the experience in the years since the uprisings had on these liminars? Despite the failed experience of the Morsi presidency, despite the emergence of popular support for the military’s removal of the country’s first democratically elected president, and despite the current climate in which calls for the “elimination” of Islamists are widely heard, these figures remain committed to democracy and to dialogue. Those who subscribe to the participation –moderation thesis would expect inclusion to contribute to a further moderating of views and exclusion to their radicalization. Since the military coup, the lines between those who support the regime and those who support the Muslim Brotherhood have become much sharper. Nonetheless, the commitment of these liminars to engaging a wide variety of perspectives has not diminished. Bishri has been quite prolific since 2011. Ummati fi al-‘alam, published in 2014, outlines Bishri’s vision of how Egypt’s revolution might contribute to an Arab-Islamic civilizational renewal (with perhaps a bolder emphasis on the latter component) on the world stage. A 2015 work, al-Tajaddud al-hadari, further charts a path for civilizational renewal through a comparison (that leans toward establishing similarities) between various concepts (modernity, democracy, citizenship, civil society) across such differences as Egyptian national and Islamic, Arabist and Islamist, secular and religious. Both works seem to be written prior to the coup, since no mention is made of it, but Bishri has been a consistent critic of the Sisi regime in his various columns and occasional public appearances, calling into question its legitimacy in various ways. In general, I have not detected any significant behavioral or ideological shift in the writings of the wasatiyya intellectuals, though it may yet be too soon to gauge among this aged intellectual class. In interviews with some of the liminal activists, one does hear a shift in the attitudes of individuals in regard to the Muslim Brotherhood and even the role of religious groups in politics. In a January 2016 interview with me, Abu al-Futuh describes his position as semi-secular, explaining that he is “not a secular person” but that (1) the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization should return to their da‘wa (proselytizing) activities in

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 109

society and stay out of politics, and (2) law should not be made by application of one interpretation of the shari‘a, but made by democratically elected legislators. He made similar statements in his June 2015 and November 2015 interviews on BBC (Arabic). This corresponds with the articulated desire of Muhammad al-Hadidi and other Muslim Brotherhood youth who have remained within the group and are continuing to assert their right to think independently. In the current context of systemic persecution of the Brotherhood that has loud if not widespread public support, certainly some members are being radicalized, Hadidi notes “a growing current within the group [that] wants to go back to the basics, to focus on social work and Daawah (preaching) and retreat from any narrow, political partisan approach.”38 The lawyer Kamal Abu al-Magd has been perhaps the most vociferous in calling for the establishment of reconciliation processes that would put the Brotherhood and the Sisi government in dialogue. However, his multiple efforts to mediate between the two, announced in the media, have been consistently rebuffed by both sides. And he has, in turn, become the object of critique for both: he has been criticized by the Muslim Brotherhood for calling for them to give up their claim to the presidency and to renounce violence, and he is criticized by the government for suggesting the release of at least some of the Muslim Brotherhood members. I note above how the motives as well as rhetorical strategies of these figures was called into question before the uprising in Egypt. Under the Sisi regime, they have found themselves not just questioned but threatened. In addition to arrests and intimidation tactics on the part of the Sisi government, the press has been used to sully their reputations, as their critical forays into the public are consistently met with vitriolic rejoinders and charges of slander, treason, and the like. Interviews with some of the analysts at al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies revealed that many secular figures view Islamist liminars as bad as the Muslim Brotherhood – or even worse (for providing a cover or enabling the Islamists). A visit to Cairo’s Shuruq bookstore for the latest works of some of the wasatiyya intellectuals revealed the entirety of Bishri and Huwaydi’s works published there were on sale (40 percent discount), and my inquiry to the shop’s proprietor was met with a sigh and confirmation that “no one wants to read them anymore.” In July of 2016, Kamal Abu al-Magd gave an interview in Tahrir that was critical

110

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

of the political climate under Sisi39 and was viciously attacked in the media the next day, most prominently by ‘Amr Adeeb on the talk show al-Qahira al-Yawm.40 The fraught status of the wasatiyya intellectuals and activists since the uprisings seem to confirm for liminars what Edmund Burke claims for moderates: that they “will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors.”41

Liminality, Transitional Justice, and Democracy Promotion Shortly after Egypt’s military removed Muhammad Morsi from power in the wake of protests against his presidency, and after nearly a thousand Islamists were killed when security forces crushed an anti-coup protest, Egyptian political science professor and activist Rabab el-Mahdi identified “a wide and hard to bridge societal polarization” as the source of the “catastrophe” and suggested that absent a reconciliation process, Egypt could enter a phase “much worse than that of the police state under the rule of Mubarak.”42 Another Egyptian political scientist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, noted that reconciliation between the regime and the Brotherhood is essential if the bloodshed in the country is to stop and they are to avoid the threat of civil war.43 Tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and thousands of other Islamist and secular activists have been imprisoned or are in exile. There have been more deaths in clashes with police, by acts of terrorism, and though torture or neglect in prison than Egypt saw under the Mubarak regime. Even more commonly than calls for reconciliation were claims that the time for reconciliation had passed. As one Cairo colleague told me in January 2016, “it is both too early and too late” for reconciliation. The literature on reconciliation processes consistently point to local, homegrown mediators as key to long-term success. Deliberative models are increasingly touted as means of building trust and resolving crises. Much of the literature on democratic transitions and consolidation note the importance of centrist, moderate, or middle-class forces (with much ambiguity as to what is meant by these characterizations). In O’Donnell and Schmitter’s words, “the talents of specific individuals (virtu`) are frequently decisive in determining the outcomes.”44 What I am suggesting here is that the “talents” that matter most are those of actors who are committed to working in the in-between and as go-betweens – that is, liminal actors who are willing to build connections and engage

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS

111

across divides, to think and act independently of existing structures of power in order to pursue a not fully formed but in many respects salient vision of an alternative to authoritarianism, whether it emerges in the form of Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the military. Clearly the liminality of the space these actors attempt to enact depends not just on Islamist liminars but on a wide range of actors whose sphere of action is liminal. At moments of sharp social and political fissures, there is clearly a need to attend to the liminal. One must ask how to expect to cast lines between the echo chambers absent Egypt’s liminars, whether the so-called Islamic wasatiyya, the “reformist Brothers” and ex-Brothers, or other similar actors from other ideological corners on the Egyptian political scene. It is in those spaces and via those actors that alternative visions and communities are worked out. Beyond this, we must consider not just liminal spaces and those who create and animate them, but the social structures in which these liminal spaces and individuals are embedded.

Notes 1. A much shorter and earlier version of some of these ideas was presented at the third annual Project on Middle East Political Science conference on Islamist politics, George Washington University (January 29, 2016) and published online at https://pomeps.org/2016/02/25/rethinking-moderation-attendingto-the-liminal/. The author wishes to thank the participants of that workshop for their comments on that early iteration and Andrea Teti for his comments on the first draft of this longer version. The research behind both iterations of this project was greatly facilitated by the Project on Middle East Political Science’s Travel, Research and Engagement Grant. 2. Jillian Schwedler, “Why academics can’t get beyond moderates and radicals,” Washington Post, February 12, 2015. Available at https://www.washingtonpost. com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/12/why-academics-cant-get-beyondmoderates-and-radicals/ (accessed December 14, 2016). 3. Shadi Hamid, “Rethinking the U.S.-Egypt relationship: How repression is undermining Egyptian stability and what the United States can do,” Brookings, November 3, 2015. Available at http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/ 2015/11/03-us-egypt-relationship-hamid (accessed December 14, 2016). 4. Ellen Lust, Jakob Mathias Wichmann, and Gamal Soltan, “Why fear explains the failure of Egypt’s revolution,” Washington Post, Monkey Cage blog, January 25, 2016. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/ wp/2016/01/25/why-fear-explains-the-failure-of-egypts-revolution/ (accessed December 14, 2016).

112

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

5. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 9. 6. Michaelle Browers, Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 7. On Egypt’s middle actors, see Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, “The path to moderation: strategy and learning in the formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36/2 (2004), pp. 205 –28, and Joshua Stacher, “The brothers and the war,” Middle East Report 250 (Spring 2009), pp. 2– 9. Available at www. merip.org/mer/mer250/brothers-war (accessed December 14, 2016); on Egypt’s moderates, see Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 8. On the importance of liminal spaces in the uprisings, see Bahar Rumelili, “Modeling democracy: Western hegemony, Turkey and the Middle East,” in V. Morozov (ed.), Decentering the West: the Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony (Abingdon, UK: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 64 – 84; on the importance of liminal actors in the uprisings, see Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013) and Raymond William Baker, One Islam, Many Muslim Worlds: Spirituality, Identity, and Resistance across Islamic Lands (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Note that neither Wickham or Baker describe liminal actors as such. 9. Mark Levine, “Theorizing revolutionary practice: agendas for research on the Arab uprisings,” Middle East Critique 22/3 (2013), p. 198. 10. Jillian Schwedler, “Islamists in power? Inclusion, moderation and the Arab uprisings,” Middle East Development Journal 5/1 (March 2013), p. 3. 11. Ibid., p. 4. 12. Jason Brownlee, “Unrequited moderation: credible commitments and state repression in Egypt,” Studies in Comparative International Development 45/4 (2010), pp. 468, 475. 13. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1969). 14. Anne Norton, Reflections on Political Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 89. 15. Audra Mitchell and Liam Kelly, “Peaceful spaces? ‘Walking’ through the new liminal spaces of peacebuilding and development in North Belfast,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 36/4 (2011), p. 308. 16. Ibid. 17. Lisa Smirl, “Building the other, constructing ourselves: spatial dimensions of international humanitarian response,” International Political Sociology 2/3 (2008), pp. 236– 53. 18. There is a tendency among Western scholars to situate these individuals into a single school or trend of thought, or even to refer to something akin to a “wasatiyya movement.” While it is the case that Qaradawi sometimes speaks

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 113

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

of “al-madrasa al-wastatiyya” (the centrist school), many of the individuals I spoke to in 2015 and 2016 resisted my description of al-wasatiyya as a current (tayar) or trend (itijah) or saw the use of the term “centrist school” as something particular to Qaradawi’s jurisprudence. Even Fahmi Huwaydi, whom Baker found to have a “close and impassioned identification” with the wasatiyya (2015, p. 169), stated his preference to be considered “independent.” While at least part of this resistant to being grouped together as such may be accounted for by the political climate of January 2016, when I spoke to Huwaydi – and I do not recall detecting it in earlier periods of research in Egypt (though neither do I recall using the term much before the completion of my 2009 book) – it is worth bearing in mind a caution against taking the connections external analysts have made as having some tangible reality prior to that analysis. Raymond William Baker, One Islam, Many Muslim Worlds, p. 67. One is tempted to dispense with talk of “center” and “moderate” altogether, but my aim here is to critically interrogate as well as draw connections between social science literature that uses these terms and what it is that I am trying to describe. It is tempting as well to use the Arabic where wst is a root for a plethora of ideas that are both relational and action-oriented, such as wasiit (mediator, broker, moderator, intermediary) and wasta (connection, intercession, mechanism) – and where the latter carries subversive potential that can sometimes reinforce and sometimes challenge existing power structures. In a somewhat problematic work, Cunningham and Sarayrah usefully distinguish intermediate wasta, which facilitates the reconciliation of conflicts, and intercessory wasta, which involves interventions aimed at obtaining advantage. Robert Cunningham and Yasin Sarayrah, Wasta: the Hidden Force in Middle Eastern Society (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993). Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Although Baker does note that the “midstream Islamists” interact with the “centrists” of other trends, his characterization as such seems to assert their status as an ideological center between radical Islamism and radical secularism and among myriad Islamists. It is not the case that the wasatiyya and their interlocutors (such as the Revolutionary Socialists) are so ideologically close as to together form an ideological center. Neither does either collection of individuals seem to form a center within their ideological families. See former Muslim Brother Haytham Abu Khalil’s book of the same title: Ikhwan islahiyyun (Reformist Brothers) (Cairo: Dar Dawwin, 2012). Alison Pargeter, The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power (London: Saqi Books, 2013), p. 43. Freedom and Justice Party, “Freedom and Justice Party demands independent investigations into allegations of rights violations,” FJP Online, February 24, 2013. Available at http://www.fjponline.com/article.php?id¼ 1395 (accessed December 15, 2016).

114

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

25. Shaaban Qassem, “The crisis is a result of a floundering presidency: Haytham Abu Khalil reveals who is really in charge behind the scenes of the Brotherhood,” Correspondent, February 28, 2013. Available at http://www.corres pondents.org/node/1991 (accessed December 15, 2016). 26. For further analysis, see Robbert Woltering, “Post-Islamism in distress? A critical evaluation of the theory in Islamist-dominated Egypt,” Die Welt des Islams 54/1 (2014), pp. 107 – 18. 27. Andrea Teti and Gennaro Gervasio, “After Mubarak, before transition: the challenges for Egypt’s democratic opposition,” Interface 4/1 (2012), p. 110. 28. ‘Aziza Abu Bakr, “al-Hadidi zawj bint khayrat al-shatir: kathir min qiyadat al-jama‘a la yutbiqun biy‘a al-imam hassan al-banna!” (“Hadidi, husband of the daughter of Khayrat al-Shatir: Many of the group’s leaders do not follow Imam Hassan al-Banna!”), Shabab, August 10, 2012. Available at http:// shabab.ahram.org.eg/News/4724.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). See also, Zeinab El Gundy, “Sheikh Qaradawi cautions Brotherhood on presidential contest,” Ahram Online, March 27, 2012. Available at http:// english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/37805/Egypt/Politics-/SheikhQaradawi-cautions-Brotherhood-on-presidenti.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). 29. Mona El-Ghobashy, “Egypt looks ahead to portentous year,” Middle East Report, February 2, 2005. Available at http://www.merip.org/mero/mero020205 (accessed December 15, 2016). 30. Jacob Høigilt, “Rhetoric and ideology in Egypt’s wasatiyya movement,” Arabica 57/2 (2010), p. 252. 31. Ibid., p. 266. 32. Ibid., p. 255. 33. Ibid., pp. 254, 265. 34. Schwedler, “Islamists in power?” p. 5. 35. See, for example, Cass R. Sunstein, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011). 36. Andrea Teti, “Beyond lies the wub: the challenges of (post)democratization,” Middle East Critique 21/1 (2012), p. 7. 37. Ibid. 38. Dina Ezzat, “Uncertain futures,” Ahram Online, April 3, 2014. Available at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/News/5868/17/Uncertain-futures.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). 39. Yusuf Sha’ban and Ahmad Sa‘id Hasanin, “Bil-fidiyu wa al-suwr . . . Ahmad Kamal Abu al-Majd: al-sisi asbah mukhifan” (“Ahmad Kamal Abu al-Magd in video and pictures: Sisi has become scary), Tahrir, July 7, 2015. Available at http://www.tahrirnews.com/posts/251610 (accessed December 15, 2016). 40. Mu‘taz ‘Abbas, “al-fidiyu . . . ‘Amr Adib: yuhajam Kamal Abu al-Majd bi subbub tasrihatihu did al-sisi” (“Video of Amr Adeed attacking Kamal Abu al-Magd because of his statement against Sisi”), Tahrir, July 8, 2015. Available at http://www.tahrirnews.com/posts/251662 (accessed December 15, 2016).

WHITHER WASATIYYA? LOCATING EGYPT'S LIMINAL ACTORS 115 41. Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, vol. 1 (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1834), p. 474. 42. Dina Ezzat, “‘We are not in civil war, but catastrophe has many forms’,” Ahram Online, August 21, 2013. Available at http://english.ahram.org.eg/News Content/1/64/79603/Egypt/Politics-/-%E2%80%98We-are-not-in-civil-war,but-catastrophe-has-man.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). 43. Hassan Shuraqi, “Sa‘ad al-Din Ibrahim: ima musalaha al-ikhwan aw al-harb alahliyya,” (“Saad Eddin Ibrahim: either reconciliation with the Brotherhood or civil war”), Arabi 21, November 14, 2015. Available at http://arabi21.com/s tory/872733 (accessed December 15, 2016). 44. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 5.

CHAPTER 5 DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER:HOW AND WHY DO WOMEN'S RIGHTS MATTER? Meghana Nayak

Introduction In 2013, 336 gender experts from the Arab region participated in a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll regarding women’s rights in 22 countries in the region. The results of the survey showed little improvement and indeed worsening in the achievement of women’s rights since the Arab uprisings.1 This chapter examines how political actors in the Global North/West respond to and speak about the issue of women’s rights in the context of the Arab uprisings. I argue that women’s rights are a site for perpetuating particular understandings about the relationship between democracy and gender. Specifically, hegemonic discourses about female protestors appropriate feminist concerns about sexual violence and women’s voices in order to promote secular, liberal democracies as the key to achieving women’s rights, without much attention to the specific demands or the varied worldviews of those protestors. Why do discourses about democracy and gender matter? Ideas and stories about the suppression of women’s rights often fail to align with the wide variety of empirical realities on the ground. The causes of violence, and thus potential solutions, are misunderstood. Even if certain discourses motivate Western governments to pressure Arab governments to address

118

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

women’s rights, without an understanding of the production, dissemination, and use of these discourses, we fail to understand or appreciate other possible political agendas Western governments may have, such as increased influence in the region; why Arab governments may resist or embrace such pressure; and the agency of women’s rights activists in determining what constitutes oppression and violence.2 Further, an interrogation of discourses of democracy and gender reveals a pattern among Western audiences of caring about women’s rights elsewhere much differently, and with more outrage, than how they speak about women’s rights here. Thus, the more we take seriously the need for discourse analysis regarding democratization and women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa, the more we understand the presumptions that underscore Western policy making. In my survey of media analysis and governmental discourse within Western countries, I found that Western political actors discursively position Arabs/Muslims who protest for democratic change as antithetical to the Arabs/Muslims who perpetrated 9/11 in the United States.3 “Democrats” are ostensibly the antidote to “jihadists.” Western discourses project “Arab/Muslim” women as the key protagonists of democracy, positing that the acknowledgment of women’s rights is a way to redeem the “Arab/Muslim” world of its backward, violent ways. At the same time, these discourses fixate on the sexual assaults and harassment women faced before, during and after the protests, particularly after elections. But this focus is due not to a concern for women’s rights but rather to a fear about the spread of cultural/religious extremism presumed to be at fault for the oppression of women. Thus, hegemonic discourses frame Arab women simultaneously as the only hope for progressive change and as symbols of why democracy cannot possibly work in the “Arab/Muslim world”; these countries are simply too misogynist to allow the kinds of women’s rights democracy ostensibly demands. Accordingly, using the achievement of women’s rights as an indicator of the strength and promise of democracy is a way to point to the impossibility of democracy in the “Arab/Muslim” world. The focus is not as much on tactics and strategies to address gender issues as it is on reinforcing the capacity and need of Western political actors to dissect, influence and diagnose the “Arab/Muslim” world. The first section of this chapter explains the appropriation of women’s rights. Drawing upon Sjoberg and Whooley’s analysis of dual

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

119

Western narratives, of the Arab uprisings as “good” and “bad” for women, I discuss how both are rooted in the presumption that liberal, secular democracies are the best for women. In the second section, I trouble the assumed link between democracy, women’s rights and secularism by situating democracy as a contested concept entangled with various forms of sovereign and global power. Accordingly, I discuss how the secular democratic project allows sovereign power to feign a commitment to gender equality while perpetuating misogyny and unequal power relationships. I also call for rethinking religious patriarchal practices so as to challenge the presumed link between religion and misogyny. Finally, I see discourses about democracy as a way to reproduce international hierarchy, which is the social stratification of countries. Concerns about democracy and women’s rights are tied to social rankings of countries as better or worse than others in terms of the treatment of women. In turn, Western countries are able to justify the need to influence the democratization of the “worse” countries. How can we speak about feminism and women’s rights in a way that does not code certain democracies (or potential democracies) as backwards, hapless, savage? Can we complicate the discourse that women are better protected and enjoy more rights in Western, liberal, secular democracies? In the third section, I caution against assuming a unidirectional flow and influence of Western discourses about gender and democracy. I build upon the work of Paul Amar to show how states in the Global South also use women’s rights as a site to justify the “rescue” of women from “bad culture,” and to fuse democracy, neoliberalism, and militarization. I explore the use of Mona Eltahawy, a self-proclaimed EgyptianAmerican feminist, by Western media outlets as an authentic insider voice that legitimizes hegemonic discursive representations of gender and Arabs/Muslims. “Native informants” claiming to speak for the Global South strengthen not only Western discourses about secular liberal democracy but also non-Western discourses of securitized rescue. Before I proceed, it is necessary to clarify key terminology used in this chapter. First, the “Global South” references countries that were formerly colonized and not aligned.4 Neither the “Global South” nor the “Global North/West” are simply geographical locations. They are produced as concepts and places in relation to each other. As Nayak and Selbin note:

120

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

It is not always entirely clear, beyond geography, what makes these places “Western,” but countries, people, scholars, and institutions ensconced in the Global North/West represent themselves as “universal,” developed, and civilized-erasing how they got into privileged military, economic, socio-cultural, diplomatic, and political relationships with the so-called Third World/Global South.5 Thus, I understand “Western” and “non-Western” in the context of lopsided power relationships that imbue certain places with perceived traits: good, bad, secular, religious, and so on. When I say Western discourses, I am referencing hegemonic, easily accessible, quickly circulating narratives in governmental statements, media reports, and popular culture that are produced in the US, Great Britain, Western European countries, and a few others. Further, I tentatively use “Arabs,” “Muslims” or “Arabs/Muslims” to speak generally about people who have been grouped into these categories or have claimed these constructs. These terms are loaded, broad, homogenizing, and often shifting. Indeed, an article that is about “Arabs” may occasionally slip back and forth in referencing “Muslims,” implicitly producing the term, ArabsandMuslims, an intimate conjoining that indicates a slippage between the terms as well as a compounding effect of the anxieties attendant to both words. I use the term “women’s rights” to broadly capture a range of issues regarding the quality of women’s lives. This may include health care, political and civil rights, financial and economic equality and opportunities, and various forms of discrimination.6 Finally, I am leaving “democracy” undefined, approaching the uprisings out of a curiosity about what democracy means.

Dual Narratives of Women as Democratic Actors This section explores examples of Western discursive use of feminism and women’s rights to position Arab women as always already oppressed yet somehow simultaneously the potential saviors of their men, their culture, and their democratic futures. It is hard to learn about the Arab uprisings without reading about sexual violence against protestors, particularly in Egypt.7 Some commentators have taken the opportunity

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

121

to reflect upon how attention to sexual violence forced conversations in those countries about violence, women’s bodies, state governance, and the history of feminist movements.8 These writers used the empirical evidence of sexual violence to think through demands protestors might make, such as changes in policing practices, reproductive rights, or family law. But a significant number of commentators, particularly those writing for Western media outlets, used the fact of sexual violence as a site for theorizing the relationship between democracy and women’s rights. Why are these Western writers using the existence of sexual violence as a way to assess the potential of democracy, when, as a matter of practice, literature and media analysis on democracy routinely leave out any attention to gendered forms of harm?9 Feminist democracy theorists and those who study the quality of democracy argue that democracy should not be measured only by the procedural requirements such as free and fair elections, competition for office, and the codification of civil and political liberties, but also by the lived experiences of democracy.10 If experiences of sexual violence truly mattered, then democracy everywhere, even in stable democracies in the Global North, would be contested and contestable. Why are those concerned about women’s rights and democracy seemingly more focused on the impact of sexual violence on democracies there than here? To dig deeper into narratives about women’s rights and democratization during the Arab uprisings, I turn to Sjoberg and Whooley.11 These scholars analyze Western media reports about the protests, tracing how women participating in the uprisings are understood and framed, to whom those understandings are directed, and the effects of these understandings.12 They pinpoint two seemingly oppositional narratives, optimistic and pessimistic, about the role of female protestors. The first, optimistic, narrative points to women’s visibility and presence in the protests as an indication of the possibility of the democratization of the Arab/Middle East/North African region, as well as the assumed consequence of increased acknowledgement, recognition, and implementation of women’s rights. Media outlets emphasize the alleged “newness” of women’s political participation, the likes of which the West had allegedly not seen before. They also describe in detail stories about sexual violence as evidence of why the old regimes were not viable,

122

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

not only in terms of how women were treated before the uprisings but also how governmental forces were responding to female protestors.13 Precisely because of the bravery of female protestors, despite all risks, pundits proclaim that women made possible and necessary the uprisings.14 Sjoberg and Whooley point out the presumptions underlying this first narrative, in which women, particularly through their desire for rights, would catalyze the modernization of their countries.15 These women, once naı¨ve, oppressed, and mute, were becoming more like “us,” coming closer to acting like women in Western countries and thus key in changing the values of their region. The second narrative sees the experiences of women during the protests as exemplary of the oppression of women, pessimistically predicting that the promise of the “Arab Spring” would falter precisely because of the historical treatment of women. Sjoberg and Whooley point to concerns that the new democratically elected governments would actually be as bad or worse for women’s rights because of the election of political Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This narrative points out that women’s experiences during the protests, at the hands of male protestors or at the behest of newly elected governmental officials, would be an indication of how women would be treated after the protests because these same men would perpetuate sexist, conservative values.16 Like Sjoberg and Whooley, Paul Amar examined media coverage of the uprisings, focusing specifically on Tahrir Square, Egypt. Amar juxtaposes one view of Tahrir Square as a “utopian space, forging a new gendered social contract,” with the opposing view of the public space as “the mosh pit for a hypermasculine mob where orientalist tropes of the ‘Arab street’ were concentrated and bottled up. This was a space constantly bursting with predatory sexuality and not disciplined enough to articulate either coherent leadership or policy.”17 Despite the perceived differences between the two stories about what the uprisings meant for women, Sjoberg and Whooley find that both narratives pivot upon the assumption that secular, democratic countries are women’s best hope for the respect of their rights. So the positive narrative assumes that women will help transform Arab countries into liberal democracies. These women are lauded by the West because they seem to be asking for a transformation to secular modernization. The negative narrative assumes that the new regimes are too Islamic and

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

123

illiberal and thus will be bad for women because they have a “principled objection to the fair and equal treatment of women.”18 Both expected outcomes pivot upon seeing women’s rights and democratization as only possible via Western-style liberal, secular politics.

Situating Western Discourses in State and Global Power Why is it problematic to assume that secular, liberal democracies are good for women? First, the narratives about women assume that they are a monolithic group, whether as Arabs, Muslims, Egyptians, or other nationalities. As Sjoberg and Whooley point out, the experiences and desires of protestors are diverse; women have had varying views on democratization, religion, women’s rights, and the protests themselves.19 Women negotiate and interpret secularism, religion, and culture in a variety of ways, finding both joy and dismay, empowerment and resistance, in these lived experiences.20 To presume the desirability of secularism negates not only the wide range of perspectives on secular politics but also the different meanings of secularism in various contexts, including socialism, communism, leftism, and anti-colonialism. Further, Arab and Muslim scholars and politicians may use the term “civil” (such as the civil state or civil society) as a more appropriate approximation of democratic politics and to resolve secular/religious tensions.21 Thus, to simply state that women would be the key to secular, democratic modernization is to miss the complexities and nuances of what the protestors articulated at the height of the uprisings and have been debating since.22 Second, the narratives presume that secularism and democracy go hand in hand, even though scholars of human rights and political philosophy are increasingly questioning the presumption of secularization as progressive.23 Wendy Brown, for example, notes that secularism is a project that makes certain proclamations, like being religiously neutral, or creating tolerance and freedom; but secular projects are actually participating in selectively monitoring some religious practices or perpetuating certain gender norms, like heteronormativity.24 In other words, secular practices must be interrogated as much as religious or cultural practices. Violence and torture committed in the name of secular projects, such as democratization or control of religious actors, indicate that secularism in itself does not inoculate people from harm.25 Nayak

124

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

cautions against creating a false opposition between secular universalism and religious tradition, positing that religious patriarchal practices are not timeless and archaic but rather are political sites for constantly negotiating and rethinking gender norms.26 While Western scholars and pundits routinely wonder whether Islam and democracy are compatible, few question the presumption that “seemingly ‘secular’, westernised actors are somehow more pragmatic and trustworthy partners for the west.”27 But it is Western governments that decouple secularism and democracy when they support secular governments that are also authoritarian. Or they may read secular socialist parties as anti-democratic, repressive, or unfriendly to Western regimes, thus supporting non-socialist parties that are far less democratic.28 Western governments also often ignore the lessons that secular critics offer of Western foreign policies.29 Secular universalism is not a free-floating norm, spreading progressive change wherever it takes root. Rather, secularism is a political project that changes meanings when attached to varying institutions and forms of governance in different parts of the world. This means we have to see how secularism is constructed and for what purposes. As Mikdashi points out, the fear of Islamists (more so than other politicized religious figures such as Orthodox Jews or Christian evangelicals) is less about rights and more about Islamaphobia: “Unfortunately, Islamists do not have an exclusive license to practice patriarchy and gender discrimination/oppression in the region. The secular state has been doing it fairly adequately for the last half a century.”30 The third problem with the narratives is that they look at democracy without an appreciation of state power and global power relationships. The cause of women’s oppression is attributed to lack of secular democratization rather than to the dynamics of sovereign power. Democracy as representative of the people’s sovereign will seems in opposition to, or at least a brake on, state sovereignty as an imposing, disciplinary force. But what one may assess as an impoverished or dysfunctional democracy might actually be the actions of a securitized state. The security state exercises and performs sovereignty through assessment of danger, and subsequent justification of coercive methods for protecting the state against constructed threats.31 Such practices are not necessarily tempered by the existence of or desire for democracy.

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

125

The security state, Amar proposes, is the culprit in the violence visited upon female protestors during the uprisings. When Western journalists were also attacked, Western media subsequently predicted that democracy could not take root in such a climate of misogyny, but Amar argues that the men who harassed and violated not only Egyptian women but also Western journalists were “plain-clothes paramilitaries or subcontracted thugs sent by State Security to attack internationals, as they had been doing for weeks.”32 Thus, his analysis compels the question of whether this sexual violence was due to some imagined unbridled, cultural misogyny run rampant – and relatedly, due to the failures of democracy – or due to the actions of the security state confronting the demands of democratization. Misogyny, in other words, is not an explanation for violence; it is a description of a pattern of gendered norms. Amar adds another dimension to the analysis of how sovereign power gets securitized. He describes how social movements increasingly levied critiques of the security state, particularly the coercive methods of the military. In response, rather than being dismantled, the state reconfigured itself, redeploying its disciplinary tactics for purported “humanitarian” purposes such as “rescuing” culture from the degradation of sexual violence, trafficking, and other forms of violence. Amar’s study of uprisings in Brazil and Egypt traces the emergence of a new kind of security state, one that fused democratic politics, humanitarianism, and militarism. Militaries have become more involved in development projects and peace enforcement missions (particularly abroad), and police have become more militarized in order to control “bad” cultural practices. The purpose of this new kind of “human security state” is to “protect, rescue, and secure certain idealized forms of humanity.”33 Accordingly, we can recast the presence of sexual violence in the context of what the government, military, and police did to punish protestors, as well as recognize that expectations that the government control or prevent sexual assaults and harassment empowered a securitized, militarized state to do so.34 In effect, the presence of secular democracy does not give us enough information about the welfare of women; rather, we must situate demands for and constructions of democracy in the context of the governing state. I also situate democracy discursively in the context of the production of international hierarchy. International hierarchy is the

126

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

ranking of countries as certain kinds of states, being “better” or “worse” regarding socially important issues.35 For example, as Ann Towns notes, the way countries treat women, particularly in terms of policies and laws that extend rights to women, is considered to be an indicator of how civilized those countries are.36 Accordingly, a concern that Arab women can or should create a “women’s revolution” or a “feminist Arab Spring” might be less about radical feminist political changes, per se, and more about whether some countries could “rise in rank” regarding treatment of women. If countries could indeed improve their social standing, then this would have implications for Western geopolitical security strategy. If a country started to treat women better due to the demands they articulated and became democratized, it would presumably be more likely to be friendly to the overtures of Western countries. Countries that seem to be improving their ranking might warrant different kinds of external involvement or investment by Western countries.37 But the promise of the Arab uprisings disintegrated. To some Western pundits as well as Arab political commentators, Arab countries are back where they started, if not worse, proving vulnerable to the nurturing of Islamism, evidenced most violently in the strengthening of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Su, writing for the Atlantic, discusses the story of a Tahrir Square protestor who became an ISIL fighter.38 The Economist calls the rise of ISIL the “jihadi Spring.”39 Jackson Diehl laments in an article in the Washington Post that the Obama administration failed to invest in liberal institutions throughout the Arab region; thus one will allegedly find “Arab proponents of democracy, market capitalism and rights for women” fleeing into exile or applying for asylum in the West.40 Chris Stephen, writing for the Guardian, argues that for Libya, the “Arab Spring” was the revolution “that ate its children.”41 These countries are quickly failing, becoming the worst countries to be a woman, to desire freedom and democracy, to be viable partners for democracies in the Global North. Thus a different kind of intervention is necessary: to punish, contain, limit an entire spectrum of Islamists. Western intervention is made possible by discourses about democratization that rank the quality of democracies based on the perceived recognition of women’s rights. As Janet Daly wrote for the Telegraph, “now we must decide: will we give active help to those Arab peoples who want to engage in that long, uneasy process [of

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

127

democratization], or are we content to consign them to the Middle Ages?”42 In these discursive understandings, if the Arab world is to be saved, it is not enough that it becomes democratic; the men, whether ordinary civilians, military forces, or government officials, must learn to respect women. They, and their countries, must be socialized to become worthy of democracy. Proclamations that Arab countries may not be ready for democracy are code for the perceived worthiness to join the club of civilized, democratic countries.43 Narratives about women in the uprisings are less about the context of those particular protests than about the act of representing women and “Arab/Muslim” countries. While not all discussions about sexual violence during the protests presumed that “Arab/Muslim” men were monolithically patriarchal, abusive, and misogynistic, an interesting effect of the attention to the stories of sexual violence may be the strengthening of a discourse that Arab and Muslim women have to somehow counter the animalistic behavior of their men, cultures, traditions, and countries. But I do not want to simply offer the usual story about how the West (mis)represents the Global South, imposing its understanding of democracy on the rest of the world. The more we state that Western countries impose democracy, the more we indubitably intertwine “the West” and “democracy.” Let us turn to the role of the Global South and “native informants” in reinforcing and writing narratives about democracy and gender.

Native Informants and the Security State in the Global South In writing this chapter, I had to negotiate not only problematic representations of Arabs by US writers and pundits, but also the tricky, painful, and deeply fractured conversations among self-proclaimed Arab and Muslim feminists about democracy and women’s rights. Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-American journalist who spent her childhood in Egypt, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia. She has made several appearances in Western media outlets and delivered public lectures at universities and conferences about human rights, feminism, and reform in the “Muslim world.” In April 2012 Eltahawy published, “Why Do They Hate Us,” in Foreign Policy.44 In this essay she pushes for a gender analysis of the uprisings by focusing on the hatred and misogyny Arab

128

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

men allegedly direct toward Arab women. She notes that “[u]ntil the rage shifts from the oppressors in our presidential palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our homes, our revolution has not even begun.” She challenges readers to name an Arab country, claiming that she could respond with “a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend.” She proceeds to give examples of violations of women’s human rights throughout the Arab region. Explaining that men wish to control women in order to suppress female sexuality, Eltahawy expresses concern that “it’s the men who can’t control themselves on the streets, where from Morocco to Yemen, sexual harassment is endemic and it’s for the men’s sake that so many women are encouraged to cover up.” Eltahawy’s piece is replete with examples of the most troubling forms of misogyny. She asks how there could possibly be any promise of implementation of women’s rights when “the new Egyptian parliament [is] dominated [. . .] by men stuck in the seventh century.” She describes her own experiences of being assaulted in Tahrir Square not only by riot police but also by a fellow protestor. The day after the article came out, Eltahawy noted in a BBC interview that women would finish what the “Arab Spring” started. She explained that women were in the frontlines of every protest and uprising, and that the next step would be a “gender revolution” because women were fighting not only the patriarch Mubarak but also the “small patriarchs.”45 In spring 2015 Eltahawy released Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, in which she positions herself as a women’s rights activist and campaigner and builds upon the points made in the Foreign Policy piece. Responses to the Foreign Policy piece were immediate but varied. For example, Shadi Hamid, affiliated with the Brookings Institution, pointed out that women exercised their agency to elect Islamist parties. Hamid noted that “democracy and liberalism do not necessarily go hand-in-hand,” arguing that the democratic “will of Arab men, and even Arab women, does not seem to be particularly supportive of the Western conception of gender equality.”46 Others argued that religion and democracy were indeed compatible. Sondos Asem, a female member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, asserted that religion can be a site of gender reforms and drew attention to class issues such as literacy rates. Imam Feisal

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

129

Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, also turned to religion, claiming that “the Prophet Muhammad was a revolutionary feminist.” He noted that as American Muslims “transform” Islam to be more attentive to gender equality, Eltahawy may have done the same, by “positively influencing events back in [her] native countr[y].”47 Others understood Eltahawy’s feelings but suggested turning the anger into empowerment. Hannin Ghaddar, a Lebanese journalist, described her attempts to seek empowerment in the face of a repressive father, noting: That’s how I started to appreciate badass ladies – ladies who are brave enough to break the chains off their bodies and sexuality [. . . .] These ladies, who are not afraid to confront men in the public sphere and turn their bodies from symbols of shame into icons of dignity and self-worth, are much more needed now; otherwise, the Arab Spring will not be completed.48 Ghaddar fundamentally agreed with Eltahawy but noted that because Arab and Muslim men also fear women, women’s rights activists can “appreciate the power they hold” and push against “the state, religious institutions, and the man of the house.”49 The most vehement and damning responses came from several Arab, Muslim, and post-colonial feminists. Naheed Mustafa and Samia Errazzouki protested the image accompanying Eltahawy’s article, a nude woman with a black niqab (head-to-toe covering) body-painted on her.50 These writers found the image offensive to those who wear niqab, as it sexualized the covering in an orientalist manner, and may have been a subtle reference to Eltahawy’s agreement with the ban on niqab in France. Errazzouki further questioned why Eltahawy proclaimed to be speaking for her. Mustafa and Errazzouki highlighted the problem with Western audiences taking for granted the representativeness of Eltahawy’s statements simply because she is Egyptian. Indeed, the popular US feminist website Jezebel declared that Eltahawy was the “woman explaining Egypt to the world.”51 Critics like Mustafa and Errazzouki are reacting to the construction of Eltahawy as a “native informant,” a term commonly used to describe those who claim to offer an authentic voice (because of experiences or identity) about oppression to Western

130

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

audiences.52 The disciplinary history of anthropology and other social sciences is replete with examples of “native” peoples offering knowledge so Western visitors could learn about the indigenous culture. Postcolonial theory has helped us to think through the power relationships at play in the construction of such knowledge claims, the singling out of certain people as alleged representatives of homogenized cultures, and the politics of knowledge dissemination. Gayatri Spivak comments that native informants are Figures who, in ethnography, can only provide data, to be interpreted by the knowing subject for reading. Indeed there can be no correct scholarly model for this type of reading. It is, strictly speaking, “mistaken,” for its attempts to transform into a readingposition the site of the “native informant” in anthropology, a site that can only be read, by definition, for the production of definitive descriptions. It is an (im)possible perspective.53 In other words, while “natives” have stories, knowledge claims, insights, and analysis of their lived experiences, the moment they become informants, their narratives are produced and understood in the context of the power relationships between the informant and the audience. Eltahawy is in some ways in control of her narrative, as she is seeking out the audience by publishing for Foreign Policy or granting an interview to BBC News. So she is a native informant not in a colonial setting but rather as a post-colonial figure traveling back and forth between the formerly colonized setting and a Western country. At the same time, Eltahawy and others who speak “truths” about their cultures and religions to Western audiences are seen as and called out as native informants to indicate both the mediation of their stories by and via hegemonic Western discourses and the act of being an informant, one who reveals, colludes, steps away from their community. They are possibly, Spivak cautions, acting as if they are not a part of “the machinery of the production of knowledge.”54 They are possibly denying how they are constituted as speaking subjects, speaking for oppressed others, speaking to and with concerned, worried, threatened Westerners and other informants or postcolonial figures located in the West. Informants like Eltahawy speak as feminists to critique patriarchal religious and cultural practices. They intentionally act as or are

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

131

appropriated as singular authoritative voices representing a place, religion, culture, country, or region. In so doing, their words are used to promote orientalist perceptions of particular religious and cultural communities. Nuances and the complexities of geopolitics are glossed over as nuisances or distractions, as informants use postcolonial information to which Western audiences do not have direct, lived access, to position themselves as exceptional. They escaped. They are turning their backs on and risking rejection by their families and communities to speak some truths that no one seems to want to admit. Or perhaps they long for family members they cannot see, or for the ostensibly humane elements of their traditions. In turn, Western hegemonic subjects uphold, cherish, and promote informant voices.55 Thus we must interrogate knowledge production: How and why do Western audiences selectively interpret information from those who reaffirm preexisting discourses about what “they” are like “over there”? But these singular voices are compelling. As Lila Abu-Lughod notes, native informants “amplify, clarify and bring to life what feminist researchers, local and transnational human and women’s rights organizations, and grassroots feminists have struggled for so long to analyze and publicize.”56 Native informants send a clarion call that all who are morally righteous should be expected to follow if they want to end women’s oppression. There are clear bad guys (oppressive, cultural and religious men) and clear answers (Western, secular feminism). But this appealing simplicity constructs oppression in a timeless, ahistorical, and apolitical way. This is dangerous because, as Sarah Mousa notes, an appropriation of Eltahawy’s response could justify attacks on the Arab region, as the same pretext (the suppression of women’s rights) is persistently used for militarized action.57 Mousa posits that men suffer repression as well, and that the root causes of oppression might be found in forms of governance rather than in monolithically understood culture and religion. Ultimately, Mousa laments, Eltahawy contributes to the “dehumanization” of Arabs. Ayesha Kazmi similarly is concerned with how Eltahawy “repeatedly associates the Arab man with the dark ages – the same Arab man that George Bush, Tony Blair and now David Cameron seeks to rescue us from.”58 The effects of Eltahawy’s “insider” perspective on misogyny are the easier justification of economic and political policies aimed to shape and influence the Arab region. Further,

132

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

increased surveillance of Arab and Muslim communities living in Western countries is justified under the pretense of protecting women from so-called cultural and religious practices, such as honor killings and genital cutting. In this discussion I do not want to reinforce a strict binary between West/non-West, colonial/post-colonial, good native/bad native. Simply casting aside Eltahawy as a problematic Arab woman distracts us from why Eltahawy matters so much. Interestingly, a Western scholar, Monica Marks, who tries to call out Eltahawy for being a native informant, undercuts her own argument by proclaiming that Eltahawy is “correct to lambast female genital mutilation, a practice that is disturbingly widespread in both Egyptian Muslim and Coptic Christian communities.”59 Marks details that she has interviewed “hundreds” of “outspoken female Islamists”; she makes sure to point out she does not agree with their views but has “enough first-hand knowledge to see beyond simplistic distortions of complex cultures such as this piece by Mona Eltahawy.” Having established herself as a sort of expert with insider access, she asserts: “Westerners often have good intentions – we want to help women. But most of us haven’t been to the Middle East, let alone interviewed a female activist who wears a full face veil.”60 Marks, in her efforts to delegitimize or problematize Eltahawy, repeats the act of the Western gaze for which Eltahawy is being skewered. I do not want to simplistically represent Eltahawy or others with similar messages as Western lackeys and puppets. It is far more complicated than that. For example, in an interview with the Seattle Times, Eltahawy makes clear that she resists the homogenization of Muslims, as “[i]t ends up being reduced to a stereotype; the angry, bearded Muslim man who looks like he wants to reach through the TV and swallow us alive. You don’t get the image of happy Muslim men, loving their families.”61 Further, I do not want to discount that some survivors of sexual violence during the uprisings may have a wide range of responses about culture and religion, some of which might very well include a desire for Western, liberal secularism. Those who are critical of Western secular projects are not more authentic than those who embrace them, and it is too simplistic to think that women’s rights activists are either for or against Western secularism or have the same understanding of what secularism and democratization look like.

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

133

I am instead looking at how Eltahawy’s claims are made possible, constructed, and intimately intertwined with the production of knowledge. What is done with certain narratives about why women’s rights are being suppressed or why democratization is not taking root? I recast Eltahawy’s analysis as a project of cultural rescue that matters not just because of the colonial tones but because of the role of countries in the Global South in cultural rescue.62 To think of Eltahawy as only reproducing what the West does to the Global South could establish the West as singular, powerful, and the beginning and end of power.63 Recall the discussion above about the new kind of security state operating in the Global South. This new state is engaging in a politics of respectability so as to appropriate concerns about women’s safety and protection to justify disciplinary mechanisms for controlling the polity.64 Amar notes that sexual harassment in public places in Egypt “has become a nodal controversy for addressing (and deflecting) issues of labor mobility, police brutality, class conflict, youth alienation, and social disintegration in an increasingly polarized polity.”65 The men who attacked women during protests were mobilized by the state; this is why many Egyptian feminists used “gender and class-specific protests” to confront the police, hoping that since women had been portrayed by the human-security state as moral, good, and respectable, their presence in the protests would reveal that the “brutalizers” were affiliates of the state, not male protestors.66 The state, however, simply negated that women who protested were respectable in the first place. These female protestors, as punishment for speaking up against the state’s role in the sexual violence, were assaulted, accused and arrested for prostitution, labeled as “sex criminals,” and then sexually assaulted in prisons.67 What happened to these women, as a response to statesponsored violence, was a story about the kind of human-security state being cultivated in the Global South. It was the assumption of male predatory behavior, a presumption to which Eltahawy subscribes, that fueled the methods of the new kind of security state in Egypt, so as to “rescue” and protect women from the bad behavior of the “common” Arab man. As Amar notes, while state-sponsored groups attacked women, “the international media, and even many Egyptian reporters, could easily believe that crazed thugs could emerge ‘naturally’ from within a group of working-class male leftists and Islamists.”68

134

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Amar gives an example of a group, Cairo’s El-Nadeem Center, that does not participate in “institutionaliz[ing] [. . .] a class-specific politics of respectability.”69 El-Nadeem does not posit women as in need of “rescue” from presumably working-class men. Its response to the targeting of female protestors is by revealing “[s]hame, immorality, and hypocrisy [. . . .] [by] the security state, not among working-class boys. And middle class professionals who collaborated with the state – in particular, doctors, social workers, and aid officials – were held responsible for ‘crimes against humanity.’”70 El-Nadeem also offered social support services to sex workers, to legitimize their human rights as well. Amar thus shows that hyper-predatory masculinity or “sexual terrorism” is not an omnipresent, timeless cultural or religious centerpiece of Arab or Muslim life but rather a state-sanctioned set of practices in the context of struggles around democratization. Eltahawy certainly does not have faith in the Global South state, police, or military to solve problems of misogyny, but her desire for the rescue of the religion and culture engenders and empowers the new kind of security state I discussed above. That is because the effect of Eltahawy’s narrative is that gender drives a wedge within the very social movements that have been trying to hold the state accountable.

Conclusion Are we forever trapped in discourses? Is there some truth about the situation of women’s rights or what would “work” for the quality of women’s lives in the Middle East and North Africa? Maybe we could ask Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist. Indeed, he has on more than one occasion described encounters with Egyptian women asking him what to do, who to vote for, whether they will be okay.71 I have to admit that I must suspend reality as Friedman describes the women who approach him in the “Arab street.” Maybe that is what happens to him when he travels; maybe it is a version of what he wishes would happen. Perhaps writing the alleged words of Egyptian women allows him to show that he has indeed consulted “the natives,” who have affirmed his authority and expertise about speaking about and for them. When writing this chapter I thought about the Thomas Friedmans among us: the well-traveled ones who gaze upon “natives,” the academics

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

135

in the classrooms, the experts on a CNN news segment, the armchair political commentators at a dinner party. They rehearse a script about “us” and “them” that seems to loop endlessly. That is why it is crucial to sort through not only the effects of Western practices of narrating how others address democracy, but also how countries in the Global South avail themselves of narratives that perpetuate themes of rescue and rehabilitation. It is precisely an investigation into the contestedness of democracy discourses that reveals dynamics within the Global South. Contesting discourses of democracy should not be limited to lamenting how Western countries aim to export secular liberal democracies, or how the Global South resists such interventions. Instead, we should consider multiple, often unheard and delegitimized narratives about what democracy should and can look like. So, discursive analysis does not limit us but rather opens the way to hear and listen to a variety of ideas, concepts, and advocacy agendas. Returning to the sentence that opened this chapter, what have we learned that can confront the situation of women’s rights in the Middle East and North African region? Can mining the discursive effects of representational practices have material effects on a variety of feminist activist causes? I contend that to ask, who is talking about women’s rights and why, is to get at the heart of the possibilities of political change. If the endgame in caring about women’s rights is to ensure that some political actors can and should influence, monitor, and shape the actions of other political actors, then this is a story about global power relations and international hierarchy, not one about improving women’s lives. But it is transnational feminist networks, not just one set of states, that have increased attention to what comprises women’s rights, articulated gender norms, and pushed for principled action to implement those norms.72 And that advocacy work is also deeply contested and replete with vibrant, difficult discussions about the causes and solutions of misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism.73 But the debates about what to do about women in the Arab and Muslim worlds rarely mention transnational and global feminist struggles and debates; if anything, there may be cursory reference to a United Nations document or the existence of women’s movements around the world but without much investigation into the content and meaning. Thus, we should proceed with caution when a narrative uses the language of women’s rights. If it is not about women’s rights, then what is really going on?

136

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Notes 1. Yara Bayoumy, “Analysis: Arab Spring nations backtrack on women’s rights,” Thomas Reuters Foundation, November 12, 2013. Available at http://www. trust.org/item/20131111110907-oyqeb/?source¼ spotlight-writaw (accessed June 5, 2015). 2. For an explanation about the importance of identifying and tracing the effects of discourses, see Meghana Nayak, “The politics of the ‘global,’” in E. Welty, M. Bolton, M. Nayak, and C. Malone (eds), Occupying Political Science: the Occupy Wall Street Movement from New York to the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 247– 74. 3. See Nayak, “The politics of the ‘global.’” 4. See Meghana Nayak and Eric Selbin, Decentering International Relations (London: Zed Books, 2010), p. 167n.3. 5. Ibid., p. 2. 6. In addition, “women’s rights” as used by protestors and commentators alike refer primarily to ciswomen. 7. Nabila Ramdani, “Sexual violence in Egypt: ‘the target is a woman,’” Guardian, July 9, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/09/sexualviolence-egypt-target-woman (accessed June 5, 2015); Jessica Gray, “Sexual assault during Egypt protests highlights everyday problems for women: campaign,” Huffington Post, July 11, 2013. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/ 07/09/sexual-assault-egypt-protests_n_3567282.html (accessed June 5, 2015); Nina Burleigh, “Gang rape, the dark side of Egypt’s protests,” CNN, July 3, 2013. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/03/opinion/burleigh-rapes-tahrirsquare (accessed June 5, 2015). 8. Mariam Kirollos, “Sexual violence in Egypt: myths and realities,” Jadaliyya, July 16, 2013. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13007/sexualviolence-in-egypt_myths-and-realities- (accessed February 5, 2015). 9. Meghana Nayak, “Feminist interrogations of democracy, sexual violence, and the US military,” in R. J. Heberle and V. Grace (eds), Theorizing Sexual Violence (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009), pp. 147– 75. 10. Ibid. 11. Laura Sjoberg and Jonathan Whooley, “The Arab Spring for women? Representations of women in Middle East politics in 2011,” Journal of Women, Politics and Policy 36/3 (2015), pp. 261 – 84. 12. Ibid., p. 262. 13. Ibid., p. 268. 14. Ibid., pp. 268 – 9. 15. Ibid., pp. 269 – 70. 16. Ibid., pp. 272 – 5. 17. Paul Amar, The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), p. 201. 18. Sjoberg and Whooley, p. 276.

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

137

19. Ibid., pp. 264 – 5. 20. Meghana Nayak, “The false choice between universalism and religion/culture,” Politics and Gender 9/1 (2013), pp. 122– 3. 21. Peter Hill, “‘The civil’ and ‘the secular’ in contemporary Arab politics,” Muftah. org, February 26, 2013. Available at http://muftah.org/the-civil-and-the-secularin-contemporary-arab-politics/#.VbKKRUUe7xY (accessed June 8, 2015). 22. For further context regarding ideas about religion, post-colonialism, secularism, democracy, class politics, and the Arab state, see Nader Hashemi, Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009); Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (London, UK: Zed Books, 2012); Andrea Khalil, “Gender paradoxes of the Arab Spring,” The Journal of North African Studies 19/2 (2014), pp. 131– 6. 23. See the discussion on sociological research about secularization and modernization in Niamh Reilly, “Rethinking the interplay of feminism and secularism in a neo-secular age,” Feminist Review 97/1 (2011), pp. 5– 31. 24. Wendy Brown, “Civilizational delusions: secularism, tolerance, equality,” Theory and Event 15/2 (2012). Available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/478356 (accessed June 15, 2015). 25. See Judith Butler, “Sexual politics, torture, and secular time,” British Journal of Sociology 59/1 (2008), pp. 1 – 23. 26. Nayak, “The false choice . . .,” pp. 120– 5. 27. Stacey Gutkowski, “It’s not all about Islam: misreading secular politics in the Middle East,” Opendemocracy.net, April 25, 2015. Available at https://www. opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/stacey-gutkowski/it%E2%80%99s-not-allabout-islam-misreading-secular-politics-in-middle-east (accessed June 15, 2015). 28. David Adesnik and Michael McFaul, “Engaging autocratic allies to promote democracy,” Washington Quarterly 29/2 (2006), pp. 7 – 26. 29. Gutkowski, “It’s not all about Islam.” 30. Maya Mikdashi, “The uprisings will be gendered,” Jadaliyya, February 28, 2012. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4506/the-uprisingswill-be-gendered (accessed June 3, 2015). 31. For more discussion, see David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall (eds), Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 32. Amar, The Security Archipelago, p. 203. 33. Ibid., p. 6. 34. Ibid., p. 203. 35. Ann Towns, Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 44 – 5; Meghana Nayak, Who Is Worthy of Protection? Gender-Based Asylum and US Immigration Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

138

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

36. Ann Towns, Women and States. 37. Relevant to this discussion is Micheline Ishay, “The spring of Arab nations? Paths toward democratic transition,” Philosophy and Social Criticism (2013), pp. 1 – 11. Ishay discusses the role of different types of intervention into the democratization process. 38. Alice Su, “The boy named Jihad: from the ashes of the Arab Spring to the battlefields of Syria,” Atlantic, June 19, 2015. Available at http://www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/jihad-jordan-syria-isis/396041/ (accessed July 3, 2015). 39. “Two Arab countries fall apart,” Economist, June 14, 2014. Available at http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21604230-extremeislamist-group-seeks-create-caliphate-and-spread-jihad-across (accessed June 18, 2015). 40. Jackson Diehl, “Fulfilling the Arab Spring,” Washington Post, April 26, 2015. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/investing-in-the-legacyof-the-arab-spring/2015/04/26/c44b1638-e9c7-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_ story.html (accessed July 14, 2015). 41. Chris Stephen, “Libya’s Arab Spring: the revolution that ate its children,” Guardian, February 16, 2015. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2015/feb/16/libyas-arab-spring-the-revolution-that-ate-its-children (accessed July 13, 2015). 42. Janet Daley, “Libya and the Arabs deserve democracy – and our help,” Telegraph, February 26, 2011. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/ columnists/janetdaley/8349644/Libya-and-the-Arabs-deserve-democracyand-our-help.html (accessed June 25, 2015). 43. See for instance Bernard Lewis’s claim that Arab countries are not ready for free and fair elections, discussed in David Horovitz, “A mass expression of outrage against injustice,” Jerusalem Post, February 25, 2011. Available at http://www. jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/A-mass-expression-of-outrage-against-injustice (accessed June 24, 2015). 44. Mona Eltahawy, “Why do they hate us?” Foreign Policy, April 23, 2012. Available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/why_do_they_hate_us (accessed June 3, 2015). 45. BBC.com, “Mona Eltahawy: women will finish what Arab Spring started,” April 24, 2012. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-17820809 (accessed June 3, 2015). 46. Allison Good, “Debating the war on women,” Foreign Policy, April 24, 2012. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/24/debating-the-war-on-women/ (accessed January 3, 2015). 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid.; Samia Errazzouki, “Dear Mona Eltahawy, you do not represent ‘us,’” Al-Monitor.com, April 24, 2012. Available at http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/

DISCOURSES OF DEMOCRACY AND GENDER

51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

139

originals/2012/al-monitor/dear-mona-eltahawy-you-do-not-re.html# (accessed January 3, 2015). Irin Carmon, “The woman who’s explaining Egypt to the world,” Jezebel.com, January 31, 2011. Available at http://jezebel.com/5747762/the-woman-whosexplaining-egypt-to-the-west (accessed June 24, 2015). I do not have room here to go through the theoretical discussions about native informants, but see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward A History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Ibid., p. 49. Ibid., p. 360. Joseph Jeyaraj, “Native informants, ethos, and unsituated rhetoric: some rhetorical issues in postcolonial discourses,” Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 12/1 (2003), pp. 65–84, 83. Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 58. Sarah Mousa, “Eltahawy’s ‘hate’ fuels real war on ‘us,’” Al Jazeera, May 8, 2012. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/2012551341177 58375.html (accessed June 1, 2015). Ayesha Kazmi, “Oh, Mona!” AmericanPaki, April 24, 2012. Available at https:// americanpaki.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/oh-mona/ (accessed June 5, 2015). Monica L. Marks, “Do Arabs really ‘hate’ women? The problem with native informants,” Huffington Post, June 25, 2012. Available athttp://www. huffingtonpost.com/monica-l-marks/do-arabs-really-hate-wome_b_1453147. html (accessed July 15, 2015). Ibid. Nicole Brodeur, “How Mona Eltahawy became a ‘full-fledged feminist,’” Seattle Times, May 15, 2015. Available at http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/ books/how-mona-eltahawy-became-a-full-fledged-feminist/ (accessed July 4, 2015). See Paul Amar, “Global South to the rescue: emerging humanitarian superpowers and globalizing rescue industries,” Globalizations 9/1 (2012), pp. 1–13. Nayak and Selbin, Decentering International Relations. Amar, The Security Archipelago, p. 204. Ibid., p. 207. Ibid., pp. 212, 213. Ibid., p. 213. Ibid. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid., pp. 216 – 17. Joshua Keating, “When the young women of Egypt need answers, they turn to Tom Friedman,” Foreign Policy, June 11, 2012. Available at http://foreignpolicy. com/2012/06/11/when-the-young-women-of-egypt-need-answers-they-turnto-tom-friedman/ (accessed June 15, 2015).

140

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

72. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 73. Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar (eds), Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010).

CHAPTER 6 JUSTIN ZONGO AND THE PLACE OF THE “ARAB SPRING”: REPRESSION, RESISTANCE, AND REVOLUTION IN EGYPT AND BURKINA FASO Nicholas A. Jackson

On February 20, 2011, in Burkina Faso, student Justin Zongo died in police custody “of meningitis,” according to government claims. Though it was later admitted that he died of beatings and police were prosecuted,1 his death galvanized longtime protests in the country and put tremendous pressure on military dictator Blaise Compaore´. Compaore´ in turn used tried-and-true combinations of brutal violence and bureaucratic maneuvering to defuse the protests2 and thus remain in office until he was finally overthrown in late 2014. From the perspective of global corporate media front pages, Justin Zongo’s death and the events surrounding it never existed. A few months earlier and a mere five-hour plane flight away, Egyptian businessman Khaled Mohamed Saeed (Said) died in police custody on June 6, 2010. His death was originally attributed to suffocation from swallowing a hash packet.3 Though it was later admitted that he died of beatings and police were prosecuted,4 his death galvanized longtime protests in the country that put tremendous pressure on military dictator Hosni Mubarak. Unlike in the case of Justin Zongo, global corporate

142

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

media organizations quickly combined the story in Egypt with the protests in Tunisia after the death of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in police custody,5 attaching the appellation “Arab Spring” to their accounts. A photogenic and assumptively humble young Google marketing executive, Wael Ghonim, quickly became the face of the uprising in Egypt after his Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said”6 became quite popular and he was arrested after participating in demonstrations. He was held in secret detention for 11 days as the demonstration he had helped schedule on Facebook (January 25, 2011) ballooned. When he was released, he soon appeared on television, where his tearful statement “I’m not a hero” was proclaimed to re-galvanize the revolution.7 After Mubarak’s fall on February 11, 2011, it was soon announced that Ghonim was working on a book, Revolution 2.0, a personal account of the first few days of the uprising published in January 2012.8 Important work is already being done to confront the Arab Spring narrative and the “non-narrative” of Africa on their own terms. In addition to excellent chapters in the current volume, Manji and Ekine have, for example, written a highly critical in-depth volume contrasting the “African Awakenings” directly with the Arab Spring narrative, invoking 30 years of resistance against neoliberalism.9 I look at a different facet, arguing that these narratives were never meant as reflections, however flawed or incomplete, on lived realities of oppression and uprisings in Egypt or Burkina Faso. Rather, they are corporate media representations that serve to keep those residing in “consuming spaces” perceptually distant from Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, the African continent, and other “productive margins.”10 In this chapter, I concentrate on neoliberalism as a key contested space that directly impacts the lived space of people in Burkina Faso and Egypt and is therefore critical for understanding repression, resistance, and potentials for revolution in these areas. In both areas, neoliberalism as spectacle is employed to legitimize disciplinary regimes of debt that justify government implementation of austerity to control populations in the interest of facilitating expropriation of productive resources. Such coercive expropriation has led to generations of resistance in both Egypt and Burkina Faso, thus belying the “Arab” and the “Spring” in the Arab Spring narrative. Just as important, such expropriation and exploitation has been hidden by these narratives.

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

143

This chapter forms part of much broader contemporary relational (perceived, conceived, and lived11) geographies of corporate exploitation, anti-hegemonic resistance, and corporate response.12 Hegemonic global corporate entities expropriate productive resources (land and labor as well as whatever capital can be freed) from those formally or informally (e.g. through communal or other non-state-defined tenure systems) possessed of those resources by fixing the possessors in place or forcing large-scale movement in service of corporate-led globalization.13 Corporate entities exercise power through diverse, dynamic, multiscale modalities (e.g. authority, seduction, inducement, domination and – only when necessary – blatant and brutal coercion) whose coherence only depends on the social interactions mediated by a particular exercise of power. Within these spaces, both corporate media and corporate academic narratives are objects of study. Corporate media representatives create simple narratives, or choose not to create any narratives, purportedly to “help categorize the news” for impatient consumers. In reality these narratives operate within global geographies of power as representations, “a basic inversion of simulacrum and original [. . .] whereby an exhibited ‘people’ became more real and authentic than the lands and people themselves.”14 In doing so, they are one way for corporate entities to “bring together different worlds (of commodities) [. . .] in such a way as to conceal almost perfectly [. . .] the social relations implicated in their production.”15 Regarding uprisings in Burkina Faso and Egypt in particular, corporate media organizations mobilize resources such as “commonsense” assumptions and even racisms16 to create simple sets of tales that fit into broader discourses of democracy/dictatorship, modernity/ tradition, enlightened/backward, and present/absent that conceal as much as they reveal about the material world. These narratives are superficial, presumptive, and transient. While Egypt is that Oriental emptiness of which the West is full,17 Burkina Faso is the classic (dis)embodiment of Africa as the “dark continent,” what Mbembe refers to as “the West’s obsession with [. . .] ‘absence,’ ‘lack,’ and ‘non-being,’ of identity and difference, of negativeness – in short, of nothingness.”18 One does not hear of Burkina Faso unless one is a student of the area, a businessperson, or a voracious consumer of news and trivia. How might a “student of the area” approach Burkina Faso and Egypt? Were the 2011 uprisings revolutionary? Why did they fail, and what are

144

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

the prospects for long-term success? One cannot answer these questions without looking at the vast areas of space– time these narratives conceal, including neoliberalism as spectacle.19 Like the Arab Spring narrative, and what this chapter calls the “non-narrative of Africa,” narratives of neoliberalism serve to hide as much as they reveal. They serve to fix in place the academy, that preeminent perceived, conceived, and lived space endowed with authority to declare who are “learned men” (doctors) in the “love of wisdom” (philosophy). Neoliberal narratives are centered in economics departments, where “hegemony is produced as dominant theoretical imaginaries in [a discipline that claims] power by presuming to the status of science.”20 Students are trained in the “science” of homo economicus where rational, self-interested individuals engage in market transactions that are only possible if countries are disciplined (structurally adjusted) so that production and exchange are based on comparative advantage. These students are then lauded and well remunerated as they reproduce these narratives in other universities or use these representations as justification for developing governance mechanisms based on debt, austerity, and resultant expropriation of productive resources. To comply with these debt/austerity/expropriation agreements, states as corporate organizations must physically discipline their populations through habits, rules, laws, and surveillance, if possible. However, the cases of Egypt and Burkina Faso demonstrate that “the other” has seldom been content with neoliberal placements/movements, and instead continually resists. “Corporate media sought to present the mobilisations as being the product of Twitter and Facebook, obscuring the agency of people.”21 Neoliberal governments must be strong, therefore, in mechanisms of violence or other forms of compulsion. “[Hidden within] the abstract ‘one’ of modern social space [is] the real ‘subject’, namely state (political) power.”22 This chapter consists of two distinct historical narratives, first about Egypt and secondly about Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), where I summarize key aspects of debt-led disciplining, resistance, and response. Egypt from at least the 1970s until after 2011 was a fairly consistent story whereby the military acted behind the scenes to manage debt- and national-interest-guided resource flows as well as “legitimate” and “illegitimate” resistance. Key within the latter group has been labor. Identity- and especially religious-based resistance is alternately tolerated

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

145

and spectacularly repressed, while political –economic resistance is systematically suppressed. The land and people of Burkina Faso, on the other hand, have been represented since colonial times as an industrially deficient and agriculturally marginal space, with governance problems that are uniquely characteristic of Africa. However, in the early 1980s, then-Upper Volta leader Thomas Sankara not only renamed the country Burkina Faso but, despite intense pressure from global elite, explicitly supported and organized alternatives to global debt-led disciplining. He was deposed, killed, and left (allegedly, subject to confirmation by the recently installed regime) in a nondescript gravesite after which his successor Compaore´ immediately adopted externally focused debtdriven policies. I conclude the chapter by reflecting on the implications of these disciplinary spaces for social transformation as well as for the corporate academy that claims authority over such study.

Authoritarian Egypt: Contesting Socialism and Neoliberalism Contrary to Arab Spring notions of stagnation, slumber, awakening, and rebirth, Egypt and its people have been long represented as an exotic place, of pyramids and pharaohs and sensual princesses, at the same time as the land and people themselves have been centrally involved or embedded in global projects of modernization, national interest, and corporate exploitation. Rather than acting as development organizations that helped to resolve balance of payments issues (International Monetary Fund, or IMF) and to support economic growth (“International Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” or World Bank) on behalf of developing countries, international financial institutions (IFIs) have acted primarily as transmission belts for corporate public or private entities in these global projects. Gamal Abdel Nasser embarked in the late 1950s on a project of economic and political nationalism, including the Cold War rivalries he attempted to balance in his best interest, initially turning toward the Soviet Union and refusing IFI aid, proposed by the World Bank for the Aswan Dam. However, in 1965, his government requested balance of payments assistance from the IMF.23 This marked the beginning of an enduring post-colonial debtand national-interest-led relationship between authoritarian regimes in Egypt and Western governments along with the IFIs they largely

146

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

control. Nasser also sought to absorb all productive sectors including the peasantry (through land reform) and industrial workers (through formation of the state-supported Egyptian Trade Union Federation or ETUF) into the state. The ETUF has played a central role since that time in attempting to suppress workers’ movements. Beinin argues that much stayed the same for social relations of workers under Nasser’s “socialism” and Sadat’s eventual infitah (translated as “openness”) policies toward investment: “[N]either under ‘socialism’ nor under ‘capitalism’ have blue-collar workers exercised significant influence [. . .] both public- and private-sector workplaces have been managed in an extremely hierarchical and authoritarian manner, involving considerable implicit and sometimes actual violence.”24 In January 1977, as part of this new way of relating to the Western world, Sadat removed subsidies on commodities including food. This represented one of the earliest examples of the burgeoning IMF structural adjustment framework (foreign-currency denominated debt paid off through export-led market economics), and led to the IMF agreeing to reschedule Egypt’s loans.25 In 1979, encouraged by the infitah as well as Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) increased foreign aid for agricultural mechanization.26 After Mubarak took power, he simply continued Sadat’s relationship with the IMF as he revolved between loan receipts and, increasingly, loan repayments. Mubarak also continued and enhanced neoliberal industrial policies, whereby agricultural production was reoriented toward export of winter vegetables and cut flowers, while industrial production was configured to export textiles and other light industries. USAID agricultural subsidies represent not only a bargaining chip for neoliberal restructuring and strategic interests, but also a key way for US government figures to support subsidized grain programs, particularly in the Midwest. According to Timothy Mitchell, “USAID operates, more or less successfully, as a form of state support to the American private sector, while working in Egypt to dismantle state supports.”27 Direct aid in military hardware as well as infrastructure provision comes with requirements that the aid be fed back into American corporations. In effect, Egypt’s authoritarian state required Egyptian people to sacrifice their nutritional health in service to large US agricultural corporations.

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

147

Workers have resisted these pressures for many years. After substantial cuts in basic consumer commodities in 1977, workers and Islamists joined forces in protest. In response, the Egyptian government restored some subsidies, but, as in subsequent cases, “both the legal and the illegal left were subjected to repression.”28 The pressure increased with the “second adjustment” (structural adjustment) in 2004, which led to major reductions in social welfare protection, and with it brought on major strikes involving approximately 1.2 million people coordinated by the middle-class Kifaya, the Egyptian Movement for Change. In 2006, at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, a major strike was called and led primarily by women who goaded and shamed men into joining and eventually forced the head of the ETUF to “come to Mahalla to negotiate with the elected strike committee, bypassing the official trade union committee.”29 After the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak, the Tantawi regime successfully marginalized all opposition except the neoliberal Muslim Brotherhood in the post-Mubarak elections; overlooked anti-IMF protests; and, after initially rejecting an IMF loan, resumed negotiations for approval. These negotiations continued fitfully under the al-Sisi government, with pressure blunted by strong financial support from authoritarian states of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Kuwait nearby.30 Perhaps the cycle will continue. Egypt will “open up” from Nasserist economic nationalism and accept IMF loans. It then will try to recover from the assassination of Sadat and accept further IMF loans. In 2010, as Patrick Bond described, the IMF was “praising the Mubarak dictatorship for implementing neoliberal policies prior to the global financial meltdown, and then after a brief moment of rising budget deficits and loose monetary policy, insisting on a return to the Washington consensus forthwith.”31 After an Arab Spring of removing authoritarian Mubarak from power, and then subsequently pressuring the “extremist” and “authoritarian” Morsi to be removed, the military regime may yet mark the occasion by signing another IMF loan designed (as economist and investment bank director Omar El Shenety describes it) “[f]or credibility first, before its money.”32 During the intervening times, Egypt is concerned with repayments of these loans: [U]nless these loans are refused and the existing debt repudiated, Egypt will find itself in a cul-de-sac from which there is little

148

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

chance of escape. Foreign debt is not a neutral form of aid but an exploitative social relation established between financial institutions in the North and countries in the South.33

Burkina Faso: Protest Culture and the Pivotal Sankara Regime Unlike Egypt, with its central role in subsidizing American agribusiness and supporting policies toward Israel, Burkina Faso has lain for much of its French colonial, neocolonial, or post-colonial history on the margins of corporate exploitation. Aside from small gold mines, soybeans, and sesame seeds, cotton production is the primary source of foreign currency. However, even more than Egypt, Burkina Faso has a long tradition of contestation by “trade unions, chieftaincies, churches, NGOs and the associative movement.”34 Every president since independence in 1960 has been eventually removed after protests. Longtime dictator Blaise Compaore´ was replaced after a long period of protests (from 2008 through 2014). While some35 imply in a manner akin to “transitology”36 that such mobilization does not represent a “democratic culture,” the mobilized groups in Burkina Faso clearly made a difference in regime operations. This was true not only with reactionary dictatorships but especially with the revolutionary regime of Thomas Sankara. While most Upper Volta and subsequent Burkinabe´37 regimes attempted simply to control and moderate these uprisings, Sankara attempted to focus them on a Marxist anticolonial project. In doing so, he dangerously threatened to undermine a primary legitimizing dictum of contemporary corporate exploitation. As Margaret Thatcher said so often, “There is no alternative” to neoliberalism. Sankara’s response was to create an alternative by increasing the ability of Burkina Faso to care for itself independently, engaging in “revolutionary self-adjustment”:38 Rather than cutting back on vital services and economic activities, the government expanded investments in health, education, and basic infrastructure, relying partly on budgetary reallocations, but also on local financing and labour through campaigns of popular mobilisation [. . .] [Thus it sought to] shift scarce resources away

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

149

from the privileged and better-off, toward the previously neglected urban and rural poor, and without following external dictates.39 Sankara was dedicated to remaking the country he renamed Burkina Faso (“the country of honorable people”) in an anti-imperialist image. He called for equal inclusion of all citizens, particularly women, in the revolution. However, Sankara’s management style was often questioned, and he was accused of being an authoritarian micromanager.40 Though much of this criticism may be justified, it also seems to draw from Sankara’s attempt to refocus power centers from urban elite and traditional rulers (that tended to use land for patronage) to rural workers including women. Sankara also came under significant pressure regarding the firing of 1,500 members of the National Union of Teachers of the Upper Volta after they struck. He invoked the history of strikes preceding regime change to argue that the teachers’ union was the puppet of a concerted effort to conduct a coup not only in Burkina Faso but concurrently in Ghana: “You know that in our country, strikes have always been used to make and break regimes. We publicly provided a certain amount of proof in this instance.”41 It was not only the teachers’ unions, however, that Sankara resisted. He argued that union leaders in general were resistant to the regime’s policies because of their “pettybourgeois” outlook where union leaders “dreamed about sweeping away the bourgeoisie in order to take its place.”42 After taking over in a 1987 coup where Sankara was killed, Sankara’s boyhood friend Blaise Compaore´ initially claimed to be “rectifying” the revolution (accompanied by an increase in the budget deficit to buy political support).43 However, his regime moved relatively rapidly toward a standard structural adjustment program (SAP). Ironically, as Compaore´ moved the country into the neoliberal fold, IFIs suggested that Burkina Faso’s record from 1984 on was a textbook example of good economic policies for maintaining fiscal balance.44 The SAP, then, seemed simply to be a rubber stamp for international creditors. It showed that Burkina Faso was not only adjusting but committed to adjusting in the “right way” going forward, through export- and austerity-led policies. Prime Minister Youssouf Ouedraogo is quoted as seeing “no other option” but an SAP to ensure external financing: “[T]here are even financing possibilities [. . .] that [a country] can no

150

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

longer benefit from [if] it cannot implement a package of conditions which the international community, at a given time, has come to regard as compulsory.”45 In the same way, “Burkina’s trade unions and opposition parties see the conditionalities as a loss of national sovereignty. ‘We take our instructions from the IMF and World Bank like the good pupils we are,’ opposition leader Joseph Ki-Zerbo bitterly commented.”46 Thus, Burkina Faso post-Sankara has followed a very similar pattern as Egypt whereby elite imposition of debt-led disciplining is associated with widespread opposition. The fact that many of the interests who resisted Sankara were coaxed back by Compaore´ through government largesse (contributing to the above-mentioned deficits) seems to confirm many of Sankara’s arguments about “petty-bourgeois” (corporate) unions. Civil service, professional, and “traditional” elites were relieved to see Sankara go, but the poor and urban and rural youth expressed opposition through “sporadic protests, overt hostility to the new authorities, and the virtual collapse of most mobilisation efforts.”47 Hilgers described Compaore´’s use of “transitology” as a political spectacle for consolidating power. “Under the cover of some kind of democratisation, Blaise Compaore´’s regime in Burkina Faso has developed the capacity of using and transforming institutions with the sole aim of keeping power.”48 More importantly for the present chapter, Compaore´’s regime was forced to balance representations of liberal democracy with a mixture of coercion and accommodation in the face of frequent (if primarily local) opposition mobilizations. According to Harsch, “In the years since the first round of local government elections in 1995, there have been more than 200 reported instances of demonstrations, mass rallies, marches, sit-ins, strikes, and riots in more than 30 urban municipalities, prompted to a large extent by local disputes.”49 No mobilization before the final overthrow was greater than that following the shooting of journalist Norbert Zongo in 1998. Zongo had been investigating the killing of David Ouedraogo, the driver of the president’s brother Francis Compaore´. Groups from across Burkinabe´ society gathered in what became an “Enough is Enough” campaign. According to Hagberg, “People were fed up with what they considered the ‘culture of impunity’, that is, that those in power may undertake illegal actions such as killings and economic crimes without any punishment whatsoever.”50 This movement represented a continuation of protests against the killing of

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

151

Sankara in 1987. As usual, the Compaore´ regime established a commission that eventually transformed into a reconciliation board and ended without significant results. This commission, combined with coercion, finally ended the 1998 Burkinabe´ uprisings. The 2011 student protests, after the killing of student Justin Zongo, followed a pattern similar to the earlier Zongo protests and other lesser-known uprisings. “As in 1998, the issues of truth, justice and impunity [that is, mobilizations for truth- and justice-confronted government impunity] were linked with social and labour issues [. . .] A model of the various stages in the handling of the student revolts would be as follows: demonstration, repression, arrests, court cases, disqualification (subversion), and negotiations through mediators.”51 The 2011 protests were largely put down through the combination of a “consultative council for political reforms” and resumption of ruthless military suppression of protests, including a brutal crackdown on a June 13, 2011 strike by finance ministry workers. Chouli ended her article with the comment that, “The waves of rebellion that hammered the country have not died down; they have only retreated to the oceans of despair, waiting for the smallest storm to unleash them again.”52 These “waves of rebellion,” nourished as they have been by decades of history, bore fruit in October 2014 when Compaore´ seemed willing to extend his term yet again and as a result was ousted by large-scale protests. With French support,53 he traveled in a large convoy to Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, Gabon, and eventually back to Cote d’Ivoire, where as of mid-2015 he reportedly continued to reside in luxury. The moves by new civilian interim president Michele Kafando to exhume Sankara’s reported remains,54 and the move toward elections to exclude supporters of Compaore´, Kafando, and members of his cabinet, seemed to portend substantive change. However, Roddy Barclay writing for Forbes magazine believed early on that the transition “will not usher in radical policy changes [and] risks will remain manageable for those prepared.”55 The bottom line of Barclay’s assessment is that, among other things, neoliberal disciplining accompanied by the non-narrative “nothingness” of Burkina Faso in the global corporate media space seems to have allayed concerns among business elite (including Barclay) that status quo exploitation might be in danger.

152

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Theorizing Fear, Volition, and Constraint Without going into the complex and dynamic geographies of business power (from distant representations to brutal violence),56 an important topic beyond this chapter, Barclay’s confidence relates directly to how effective neoliberal debt-justified state disciplining is in providing space for exploitation (defined by business as “use”). What drives the success or failure of this disciplining if “entrenched culture” (“Arab Spring” or nonexistence of Africa) is primarily a spectacle of corporate media and “scientific individualism” (neoliberal economics) is primarily a legitimizing narrative intended for corporate academia? Beinin and Vairel suggest that overcoming this disciplining depends on “the extent to which [the uprisings] can generate sufficient mutual trust to overcome decades of fear instilled by authoritarian regimes, and [insurgent] skill [. . .] in outmaneuvering incumbent regimes by deploying a repertoire of contention.”57 Hibou agrees in the context of Tunisia that “the real transformation [of the 2011 uprisings], which is without any doubt a fundamental one, resides in the disappearance of fear.”58 Beinin further remarks that, “[d]espite their weakness in the first post-Mubarak parliament and the presidential contest, in addition to their lack of political unity, independent trade unions are nonetheless the strongest nationally organized force” that can resist the triumvirate of authoritarian military power, lingering elements of the Mubarak regime, and “the failed market fundamentalist policies that Egypt will be under pressure to maintain in order to receive needed assistance from international financial institutions.”59 Beinin and Vairel are right to focus on workers and highlight the “failed market fundamentalist policies” missing from narratives of corporate media and corporate academia. However, their voluntarist focus on cognition (trust/fear) and jargonist “repertoires of contention”60 take away from their power to analyze constraints, including those that affect trade unions in particular. Cognition (fear/trust) and individual interactions with institutions are only part of the story. Chouli, on the other hand, argues that “[t]he biggest similarities between North Africa and Burkina are structural – an unequal society, the lack of opportunities, police violence, the rule of impunity, a closed political system, a bourgeoisie in bed with a chaotic political administration, the longevity of the regime.”61 Chouli’s structuralist

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

153

orientation is echoed by Lefebvre’s Marxist geographical approach, the spatial nature of which underpins this chapter’s epistemological orientation. For Lefebvre, production of space (perceived, conceived, and lived) is determined by the mode of production and the contradictions within. “Abstract space” (noncritical knowledge, state violence, and parasitic bureaucracy) contains “the seeds of a new kind of space [differential space].”62 Hibou also argues that structural constraints are fundamental, or at least primary, in determining the nature and power of resistance movements: “[The mobilizational] crack in the wall was less the result of a decision properly speaking – police repression – than of the unexpected and non-programmed action of human beings.”63 “Nonprogrammed action” includes “conflicts and the reversal of relations of force, of the unforeseen, of the indefinite nature of things, of the ‘insolence’ of daily life, and of the ambiguity of words and deeds.”64 This micro-politics of dissent fits comfortably within “the global debt economy, of the fictive construction of a solid banking system” sustained not through laws or “decision[s] properly speaking” but “from nonwritten norms that all protagonists are familiar with.”65 Hibou’s non-written norms and random micro-political structures represent a kind of formless “flow” of power through authority that runs counter to the idea that power is mediated through social interaction. I suggest that exercise of power through social interaction is instead dynamic, multifaceted, complex, and as much if not more dis-regulatory than self-regulatory. Disciplines of everyday policing, cycles of resistance (Burkina Faso’s first Zongo affair in 1998, the 2007 protests in Egypt, the 2011 Zongo affair, and the 2014 overthrow of Compaore´) and oppression, veils of representation, and debt come about through rational elite strategies combined with the desire of vulnerable people to protect their lives and the lives of their families and communities. Whereas Compaore´ deftly combined brutality with “consultative council[s] for political reforms,” in Egypt “[t]he systematic micropractices of state power sought to advance its control not simply through violence and repression but [also by] instilling a sense of randomness and unreliability [that] fostered a feeling of helplessness and of dependency on the state.”66 This combination of polyarchic scientism (e.g. “consultative councils”) and arbitrary or random force fits well within the framework

154

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

of authoritarian neoliberal debt-led governance, where creation of debt is used as what Hibou calls a “fictive” license or initiation into the global economic community. Debt has long been used to bring exhausted populations gradually back into the neoliberal fold,67 as Klein describes in regard to South Africa after the overthrow of apartheid.68 Whereas authoritarian rulers such as Compaore´ take on debt to ingratiate themselves with wealthy insiders and outsiders, the combination of debt and austerity hits populations in their most vulnerable place, their concern for family and community stability. Thus, debt is very much a lynchpin of contestation, where people must continuously decide whether the miserable and uncertain status quo – accepting the fictions about debt and development foisted on them by those able to exercise power locally and globally – is preferable to the certainly violent but otherwise far less predictable alternatives brought by contestation. As Hibou indicates, it is not the need for the debt to be repaid that acts as the constraint. Rather, it is the regular payment that demonstrates compliance with the status quo.69 Understanding the dynamics underlying the exercise of power to uphold as well as resist debt-led and “dis-regulated” repression requires geographically informed ethnographic examination of two oft-hidden spaces. First, there are the hidden spaces of social reproduction within the household and in the workplace where, according to Marx, “there is no admittance except on business.”70 Jessica Winegar, writing for American Ethnologist, stated that, “Focusing only on the iconic revolutionary – and, by extension, iconic notions of revolution – means missing the myriad, everyday ways that social transformation is experienced, enabled, and perhaps impeded, always in relationship to space, gender, and class.”71 Men and women in vulnerable employment or wealth situations often do not feel confident, safe, or desperate enough to put their positions and their families in danger. These human beings are not simply embedded in “relations of force” or “micro-practices of state power,” but rather engage or disengage through various combinations of awareness, location, and interaction. Scott is right to speak of those who sustain status quo realities until they feel strong enough to confront “the teeth” of power.72 However, Ghannam is also right to highlight culturally embedded relationships between information and interpretation of violence:

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

155

In al-Zawiya [a low-income neighborhood in northern Cairo], men are expected to use violence both inside and outside the home to assert their standing as men. However, a close look at daily practices reveals that people make a clear distinction between proper and improper uses of violence.73 Ghannam describes how Mubarak was initially seen as exercising appropriate violence against “social terrorism” because people (embedded in patriarchal cultural sensibilities) only had access to the news on state media. When those media representations were ruptured, feelings of people in al-Zawiya quickly changed. On the other hand, during the short rule of the Muslim Brotherhood after 2011, media organs helped turn people against the Muslim Brotherhood by spreading rumors that antimilitary violence was instigated by Muslim Brotherhood-linked extremists: When these kind of stories spread, very quickly for a lot of the population which is religious, but has a tendency to be critical of religious extremism, of the kind you might hear from Syria or Palestine, they quickly started identifying the MB as a kind of increasingly militant group.74 The second space lies at the other end of the spectrum of social interaction. It is the space of what Wedel calls the “shadow elite” or “flexians.”75 These are the people who “game the system,” as Wedel terms it, by strategically manipulating expertise and information. Rather than formless “fictive institutions” to which people conform as they seem to do in Hibou’s reading of Tunisia, Wedel names individuals who market “independent authority” for private gain by moving through government, finance, and academic institutions. Though even Wedel is hesitant to assign sociopathic intent to these individuals, they clearly assent to what she calls “greed” corruption.76 These are people who create institutions of representation and governance that legitimize coercion but for private gain: [T]hose who were actively lobbying on behalf of Mubarak’s government in the lead-up to the unrest [. . .] included three top players: K-Street legend Tony Podesta, former congressman Toby

156

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Moffett, and, once again, Bob Livingston. According to the New York Times, they had a “joint, multimillion-dollar contract with Egypt. [They] met with dozens of lawmakers and helped stall a Senate bill [in 2010] that called on Egypt to curtail human rights abuses.”77 Much more ethnographic work like Wedel’s needs to take place through these spaces in order to understand how power is exercised for repression and exploitation, in the face of persistent if not always acknowledged resistance.

Conclusion: The Challenge of Examining Ruptured Space It is valuable and important to question the Arab Spring and neoliberal narratives on their own terms because they are powerful representations for legitimizing present-day systems of governing power. However, it is at least as important to examine how the underlying entities of corporate media and corporate academia fit into larger geographies of corporate exploitation, anti-hegemonic resistance, and corporate response. I examined a small but key part of these geographies by describing how neoliberal debt-justified governance legitimizes long-standing authoritarian state disciplining in Burkina Faso and Egypt. Egypt has been centrally embedded in global national security and political economy frameworks, with relatively stable authoritarian governance even after the 2011 regime change. Burkina Faso, though playing a much more marginal role globally, was significantly transformed for a time by Sankara’s explicit rejection of external debt-led disciplining. This led to Sankara’s violent death, after which external structures of debt were quickly applied through the Compaore´ regime. This took place even as the IFIs explicitly indicated that Sankara’s government did not have a problem of fiscal imbalance. Reproducing Arab Spring narratives and neoliberal debt-justified governance mechanisms within corporate media and corporate academia generally – especially if one has graduated from the appropriate elite institution – leads to a well-remunerated position, held in high regard at the center of one’s field with scholarship requirements that are quite comfortable and adequately endowed. Engaging with the lands and people in Egypt, Burkina Faso and even Wisconsin often leaves one, at

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

157

best, working from the margins of one’s discipline or doing one’s work outside of “normal” academic responsibilities.78 At worst, one might find oneself residing in one of the same prisons as Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd El-Fattah or filmmaker Philip Rizk,79 or perhaps in the same nondescript gravesite as Thomas Sankara. In the end, it is disingenuous and even (as indicated in this chapter) deceitful to pretend that scholarship can be clean, synthesized, simple, well-ordered, and still tell the stories of “what it means to experience a brush with power.”80 On the other hand, as Murrey describes the 2014 Burkinabe´ uprisings, in light of counter-movements in Egypt, Let us look with both an optimistic anticipation [. . .] as well as a critical eye for the ways in which political mobilizations in the past have been sabotaged – not because sabotage is inevitable in Burkina today but precisely because it is preventable.81

Notes 1. Brahima Oue´draogo, “Justice campaigners welcome police convictions for fatal beating,” Inter Press Service, August 29, 2011. Available at http://www.ipsnews. net/2011/08/burkina-faso-justice-campaigners-welcome-police-convictionsfor-fatal-beating/ (accessed August 17, 2016). 2. William Whitlow, “Burkina Faso shaken by widespread protests,” World Socialist Web Site, April 26, 2011. Available at https://www.wsws.org/en/ articles/2011/04/burk-a26.html (accessed August 17, 2016). 3. John Ehab, “Journalists protest state media coverage of Alexandria police killing,” Egypt Independent, June 30, 2010. Available at http://www.egyptindependent.com/ news/journalists-protest-state-media-coverage-alexandria-police-killing (accessed August 17, 2016). 4. “Khaled Said’s killers sentenced to ten years in jail,” Ahram Online, March 3, 2014. Available at http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/95747/ Egypt/Politics-/Khaled-Saids-killers-sentenced-to-ten-years-in-jai.aspx (accessed August 18, 2016). 5. Joshua Keating, “Who first used the term Arab Spring?” Foreign Policy, November 4, 2011. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/11/04/who-firstused-the-term-arab-spring/ (accessed August 17, 2016). 6. “We are all Khaled Said.” https://www.facebook.com/ElShaheeed (accessed August 18, 2016). 7. Mike Giglio, “How Wael Ghonim sparked Egypt’s uprising,” Newsweek, February 13, 2011. Available at http://www.newsweek.com/how-wael-ghonimsparked-egypts-uprising-68727 (accessed August 17, 2016).

158

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

8. Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0: the Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power: a Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). 9. Firoze Manji and Sokari Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford: Pambazuka Press, 2011). 10. Jeffrey W. Mantz, “Improvisational economies: coltan production in the eastern Congo,” Social Anthropology 16/1 (2008), pp. 34 – 50. 11. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991). 12. “[While] power is not some ‘thing’ or attribute that can be possessed, I do not believe either that it can flow; it is only ever mediated as a relational effect of social interaction.” John Allen, Lost Geographies of Power (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003); on relations of domination and mutual support, see John McCamant, “Expanding democracy in a world of increasing inequality,” unpublished manuscript, 1998. 13. Corporate entities are bundles of representation, location, or governmentality that are able to exercise power as if by one body. Corporate entities can include business organizations, trade unions, civil society organizations, churches, states, intergovernmental organizations, ethnic groups (“chiefdoms”) and academic “schools of thought.” Corporate entities are composed of people, rules, habits, symbols, narratives, buildings, boundaries, rhythms, walls, and much else besides. They exercise power dynamically, above all to control production of space. Anti-hegemonic opposition seeks the overturning of these corporate entities, in whole or in part. 14. Andrew H. Apter, The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 21 – 33. 15. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, UK; New York: Blackwell, 1990), p. 300. 16. Disney, for example, was originally content to mobilize an everyday racism about ‘Arab barbarians’ cutting off peoples’ heads. See David J. Fox, “Disney will alter song in ‘Aladdin’: Movies: Changes were agreed upon after ArabAmericans complained that some lyrics were racist. Some Arab groups are not satisfied.” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1993. Available at http://articles.latimes. com/1993-07-10/entertainment/ca-11747_1_altered-lyric (accessed June 28, 2015). 17. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 18. J.-A. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 4. 19. Nicholas A. Jackson, “Neoliberalism as spectacle: economic theory, development and corporate exploitation,” Human Geography 4/3 (2011), pp. 1 – 13. 20. Richard Peet, Geography of Power: the Making of Global Economic Policy (London; New York: Zed Books Ltd., 2007), p. 17. 21. Manji and Ekine (eds), African Awakening, p. 10. 22. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, pp. 51ff.

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

159

23. Joel Beinin, “Workers struggles under ‘socialism’ and neoliberalism,” in R. El-Mahdi and P. Marfleet (eds), Egypt: The Moment of Change (London; New York: Zed Books, 2009), p. 69. 24. Ibid. 25. Rabab El-Mahdi and Philip Marfleet (eds), Egypt: The Moment of Change (London; New York, NY: Zed Books, 2009), p. 3. 26. Timothy Mitchell, “The object of development: America’s Egypt,” in J. S. Crush (ed.), Power of Development (London; New York, NY: Routledge, 1995), p. 140. 27. Ibid., p. 151; see also Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002). 28. Beinin, Workers Struggles, p. 71. 29. Ibid., p. 84. 30. Tarek El-Tablawy and Alaa Shahine, “Egypt’s president-elect still eyeing IMF loan,” Daily Star, June 30, 2012. Available at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/ Business/Middle-East/2012/Jun-30/178821-egypts-president-elect-still-eyeingimf-loan.ashx (accessed November 30, 2016). 31. Patrick Bond, “Neoliberal threats to North Africa,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Pambazuka Press, 2011), p. 255. 32. “IMF loan could be back on the table for Egypt,” Bloomberg News, May 28, 2015. Available at http://www.thenational.ae/business/economy/imf-loan-could-beback-on-the-table-for-egypt (accessed August 18, 2016). 33. Adam Hanieh, “International financial institutions and Egypt,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Pambazuka Press, 2011), p. 245. 34. Sten Hagberg, “‘Enough is enough’: an ethnography of the struggle against impunity in Burkina Faso,” Journal of Modern African Studies 40/2 (2002), p. 229. 35. Ibid.; Mathieu Hilgers, “Evolution of political regime and evolution of popular political representations in Burkina Faso,” African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 4/9 (2010), pp. 350 – 9; Rene´ Otayek, Filiga Michel Sawadogo, and Jean-Pierre Guingane´, Le Burkina entre re´volution et de´mocratie (1983-1993): ordre politique et changement social en Afrique subsaharienne (Paris: Karthala, 1996). 36. “Transitology” refers to a dominant school within corporate comparative politics (including the Journal of Democracy and the National Endowment for Democracy) that claims to objectively explore how transitions from authoritarian or totalitarian rule to democracy pass through phases of institution development and finally cultural maturation. For some of the earliest work, see Dankwart A. Rustow, “Transitions to democracy: toward a dynamic model,” Comparative Politics 2/3 (1970), pp. 337–63. 37. “Burkinabe´” is an adjective meaning “related to Burkina Faso.” For example, the people of Burkina Faso are known as the Burkinabe´ people.

160

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

38. Basile L. Guissou, “Le Burkina Faso au-dela` de l’ajustement structurel,” Africa Development 21/2 – 3 (1996), p. 164. 39. Ernest Harsch, “Burkina Faso in the winds of liberalisation,” Review of African Political Economy 25/78 (1998), pp. 628–9. 40. Rene´ Otayek, “The democratic ‘rectification’ in Burkina Faso,” Journal of Communist Studies 8/2 (1992), pp. 82 – 104; Robin Shuffield, Thomas Sankara: the Upright Man (San Francisco: California Newsreel, 2006). 41. Thomas Sankara, Thomas Sankara Speaks: the Burkina Faso Revolution 1983 –87 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1988), p. 179. 42. Ibid., p. 139. 43. Rene´ Otayek, “The democratic ‘rectification’,” pp. 82 – 104. 44. Ibid., p. 89; Mike Speirs, “Agrarian change and the revolution in Burkina Faso,” African Affairs 90/358 (1991), p. 102. 45. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, June 26, 1992. 46. Quoted in Harsch, “Burkina Faso,” p. 629. 47. Harsch, “Burkina Faso,” pp. 625 – 41. 48. Mathieu Hilgers, “Evolution,” p. 352. 49. Ernest Harsch, “Urban protest in Burkina Faso,” African Affairs 108/431 (2009), p. 265. 50. Hagberg, “‘Enough is enough’,” p. 221. 51. Lila Chouli, “Peoples’ revolts in Burkina Faso,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford: Pambazuka Press, 2011), pp. 135– 6. 52. Ibid., p. 145. 53. “France helped Compaore´ flee Burkina Faso unrest, Hollande says,” France 24, November 4, 2014. Available at http://www.france24.com/en/20141104france-helped-compaore-flee-burkina-faso-unrest-protests-hollande (accessed August 18, 2016). 54. Hisham Aidi, “Reviving Thomas Sankara’s spirit,” Al Jazeera, June 4, 2015. Available at http://allafrica.com/stories/201506041434.html (accessed August 18, 2016). 55. Roddy Barclay, “In Burkina Faso, a new twist on West African coups,” Forbes, October 31, 2014. Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/riskmap/2014/ 10/31/in-burkina-faso-a-new-twist-on-west-african-coups/ (accessed June 28, 2015). 56. For discussion of business strategies in the context of petroleum exploitation and CSR, see Nicholas A. Jackson, “A failure but the oil keeps flowing: the Chad-Cameroon petroleum development project,” in N. L. De Silva and N. A. Jackson (eds), Planet, People and Profit: Striking a Balance (Stockholm: Nordic ePublisher, 2013), pp. 28 – 46; Nicholas A. Jackson, “Perception, governance and extractive industry exploitation: the rise of corporate social responsibility,” in N. L. De Silva and N. A. Jackson (eds), Planet, People and Profit: Striking a Balance (Stockholm: Nordic ePublisher, 2013), pp. 221 – 38.

JUSTIN ZONGO

AND THE

PLACE OF

THE

“ARAB SPRING”

161

57. Joel Beinin and Fre´de´ric Vairel, “Afterword: popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt,” in J. Beinin and F. Vairel (eds), Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 237. 58. Be´atrice Hibou, The Force of Obedience: the Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia (Malden, MA: Polity, 2011), p. xiii. 59. Joel Beinin, The Rise of Egypt’s Workers, (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012), p. 19. 60. I argue that the “Social Movement Theory,” which produced “repertoires of contention,” is, like neoliberalism, a baseline legitimizing narrative produced by corporate academia in service of exploitation. Beinin’s adherence to this “school” hamstrings his analytical power. For reference to Social Movement Theory, see Doug McAdam, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, “Toward an integrated perspective on social movements and revolution,” in M. I. Lichbach and A. S. Zuckerman (eds), Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 142– 73. 61. Chouli, “Peoples’ revolts,” p. 132. 62. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, pp. 51ff. 63. Hibou, The Force of Obedience, p. xvi. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., p. 55. 66. Sherine Hafez, “No longer a bargain: women, masculinity, and the Egyptian uprising,” American Ethnologist 39/1 (2012), p. 39. 67. Bond, “Neoliberal threats,” pp. 252 – 72. 68. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2007). 69. Hibou, The Force of Obedience, p. 53 for example. 70. Karl Marx, Capital: a Critique of Political Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 195. 71. Jessica Winegar, “The privilege of revolution: gender, class, space, and affect in Egypt,” American Ethnologist 39/1 (2012), p. 70. 72. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), p. xiii. 73. Farha Ghannam, “Meanings and feelings: local interpretations of the use of violence in the Egyptian revolution,” American Ethnologist 39/1 (2012), p. 33. 74. Philip Rizk, “‘The next battle will be much more violent’: Interview with Philip Rizk,” Kosmoprolet, January 26, 2015. Available at http://kosmoprolet. org/node/152 (accessed August 18, 2016). 75. Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 76. Janine R. Wedel, Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security (New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2014), Kindle location 3931.

162

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

77. Ibid., Kindle location 1148. 78. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Making anthropology public,” Anthropology Today 25/4 (2009), pp. 1 –3. 79. Jared Malsin, “Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah sentenced to five years in jail,” Guardian, February 23, 2015. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2015/feb/23/egyptian-activist-alaa-abd-el-fattah-sentenced-five-yearsjail (accessed August 18, 2016); Rizk, “‘The next battle’.” 80. Allen, Lost Geographies, p. 13. 81. Amber Murrey, “‘Blaise De´gage! Sankara Vit!’: Burkina Faso’s revolution,” Ceasefire Magazine, November 3, 2014. Available at https://ceasefiremagazine. co.uk/blaise-degage-sankara-vit-burkina-fasos-revolution/ (accessed August 18, 2016).

CHAPTER 7 A MATTER OF PROTEST: THE ARAB SPRING IN SYRIA Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh1

Introduction Since 2011, al-hirak, as shorthand for peoplehood,2 has emerged as a salient feature of people-led politics from below. The Arab region will never be the same again. Yet al-hirak as agency, ethos, and civic and unruly action remains uneven. Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and Libya have all adopted policies to combat it. Others have been slow to address it (some Gulf states; Jordan). Tunisia has adapted its politics to being receptive to it. Against this backdrop, we attempt to show that al-hirak as agency and mobilization in civil society displays variation in terms of content and transformation. Regardless, however, we argue that al-hirak has resulted in an enduring transitory impact, and the institutionalization of change in polity –society relations. This chapter thus brings al-hirak into sharper focus, arguing that analysis of Arab polities after the eruption of the 2011 uprisings – and attendant non-state actors, parties and social movements, civic and unruly – is critical to understanding the state of bottom-up transformation in Arab politics. In this chapter, we seek to capture only a snapshot of the bottom-up transformation through a critical analysis of the substance and agents of change, with special reference to Syria. First, we show that the al-hirak-based mobilization in revolutionary contexts is an emerging critical factor that helps unpack the nature of

164

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

change and the dynamics involved in the Arab Spring. Second, our analysis reveals that in the case of Syria anti-systemic protest-led hirak and mobilization, civic and unruly, is conditioned by enduring authoritarianism, highlighting the importance of new types of activisms, peaceful and violent.

The “Hirak” in the Arab Spring The distinctly Arab Spring-type revolts of 2011 and the events that attended upon them have set the stage for polarization of state – society power relations within and between states in the region. The fragmentary nature of this moment marks the new politics evident across the region’s vast geography. The twin protest – contest dynamic and explosion of violence shall not wither away. The Arab Spring cannot be oversimplified by reducing it to manifestations of “hungry mobs” or “street politics.”3 It is indirectly a public opinion barometer that speaks to important issues of distribution of power and wealth. For example, the Arab human development agenda is noted for glaring deficits in need of urgent attention. They include deficits in inclusiveness, freedom, equality, empowerment, and knowledge.4 The emerging trends that are driving the process of change – for and against stability – be they violent or nonviolent, spontaneous or planned, top-down or bottom-up, and motivated by domestic or external agenda-setting, all point to a heightened state of polarity in state – society relations. The center and margin seem to be locked into a kind of logic of rivalry. In contradistinction to previous phases of post-colonial history, the political margin has rekindled the practice of speaking back (dissent and protest) or striking back (with physical force). The political margin has always challenged the center, emerging every now and again when the state retreats or is complacent.5 Conventional wisdom in the field of international relations (IR) has ignored the stubborn persistence of the political margin or peoplehood in shaping politics both regionally and globally. Non-state actors have been potent, e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood spread from Egypt to Arab and nonArab locales during the twentieth century. Externally, the Arab Spring has created openings for discourses and forces that have produced (ideologically and materially) transnational entanglements.

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

165

The “fallout” from these entanglements has complicated the region’s politics. The proliferation of non-state actors, flowing from new national politics, has its imprint all over the chessboard that is the Middle East, seeking to transform the game with nonconventional gambits. The peoplehood (al-hirak), is today on full display, taking both civic and unruly permutations.6 For example, its drive to change the political landscape in the Arab Middle East on behalf of the forces of re-Islamization has, from the outset, accompanied the Arab Spring. It has manifested itself within non-state actors, namely Islamists who have indelibly imprinted on the Arab Spring, either as legal or illegal agents of change. These unruly permutations seem to outweigh the impact of secularist forces and are checked only by forces of the so-called “deep state” (the armed forces) in countries such as Egypt and Syria. Peacefully and violently, Islamist non-state actors have contributed a great deal to the drive to reconfigure power in the Arab Middle East. The renewed prominence of non-state actors during the Arab Spring has added new factors to regional and national political contexts. Key characteristics of non-state actors vary based on the adoption or non-adoption of violence, sect, date of formation, and field of action, e.g. countries and elections. Political activity revolving around the poles of ruly and unruly forms have led to a state of affairs which includes longstanding regimes falling (such as those of Ben Ali, Gaddafi, and Mubarak), those stubbornly holding on to power (such as Assad and Bouteflika), and others co-opting opposition movements (King Mohamed VI). The use of violence and nonviolent political methods by Hezbollah and Libya Dawn blurs these two categorizations, which is accounted for in the category of “hybrid violent – nonviolent movements.” Three additional categories would further help in identifying crucial aspects of the movements. Ideology, activities (rather than field of action), and countries/country will enable the reader to make sense of a typology of movements in the Arab Spring period. Ideologies could be Salafism or Islamism. In the case of the latter, we have examples ranging from reformist/moderate (Wasatiyyah) to Khomeinist. Activities include elections, violence, and armed resistance. Some of the movements are simultaneously national, regional, and global, while others are merely located in one specific country.

166

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Center vs. Periphery and the Dynamic of Change The center – periphery model is deployed here very loosely. This model views power relations in a quasi-concentric sense: the center represents the powerful industrialized states. The periphery refers to the states which remain politically and economically dependent on these powerful states. Neo-Marxist scholars use it to explain disparity between the developed colonial and neo-colonial North and the developing and underdeveloped South in the world economy. In so doing, they underscore the underdevelopment or dependent development of the periphery as a structural feature of the world capitalist system. Wallerstein,7 Amin,8 and Frank9 take the center – periphery cleavage to be integral to the development of capitalism. The core (colonial and neocolonial developed North) has advantages over peripheral countries in terms of technology and capital-intensive production. At the core of the center– periphery model there exists a reproducible structure of unequal power relations. What reproduces this structure of inequality is the near monopoly of technology and predominantly capital-intensive production of high value-added products in the North, and specialization in labor-intensive low value-added raw material and light industrial products in the South. The post-colonial ruling houses, elites associated with the military bureaucracy, and comprador capitalist groups are complicit in exploiting the working poor in both the center and the periphery. They control financial, technical, and coercive resources. Parsimoniously, the center – periphery model in which various globalized systems are entangled is used here as a metaphor to refer to the asymmetrical structural power relations within post-colonial Arab states. A variant of the center periphery metaphor depicts the territorial nation state in the Middle East. Charles Tripp connects the uneven power relations with the modeling of the post-colonial Arab state by colonial powers on the modern European Westphalian examples – though these are increasingly discredited. The post-colonial ruling elite that inherited power from the colons engineered unequal state – society relations. The entire new statist foundation is built to control resources (e.g. politics, coercion, education, bureaucracy) and distribute goods (e.g. employment, status, power, etc.).10 This neutralized the traditional powerholders, pushing them to the periphery of polity and economy. In the

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

167

same vein, Chalmers Johnson’s outline of the anatomy of what he calls the “developmental state” approximates this in terms of economic planning.11 It displays features of a strong state, acting autonomously of society and having the means to control and determine the content and direction of economic development. The neat characterization of the post-colonial Arab state as a “strong” entity in control of a “weak” society is problematized here.12 The Arab Spring has not landed from the “moon.” It has been incubated in a matrix of dynamics that has, since the 1990s, seen the profusion of protests, emergence of countervailing forces, and discourses from below. The post-colonial ruling elite relied on the classic divide-and-rule policy to sustain their political and socio-economic dominance over postcolonial societies. This fragmentation has come to haunt them. The very weakness of a fragmentary society that the post-colonial Arab state has, since its genesis, relied on for control, became a site of resistance and even de-nationalization. The forces, voices, and discourses relegated by the center to the margins of power refused to be sidelined and silenced. The periphery was refashioned into a site of visibility not invisibility, struggle not passivity, and resistance not acquiescence. Even the return to “primordial” networks of solidarity facilitated the creation of civic spaces empowering society – at the expense of the state. From this angle, the Arab Spring has been in the offing since before 2011. The void of power (the peripheral sites abandoned by the state) was turned into a power of the void (the peripheral forces and voices that reorganized themselves) to strike back at the state.13 Thus, the notion of “peoplehood” is used here as a way of contextualizing the trend of rising sites of anti-systemic struggles in the Arab region. The periphery is the space from which society has launched its uprisings, revolts, and self-organization into a formidable adversary to the central core, the authoritarian state. This is what has given birth to a historical moment of “peoplehood,” literally a “wave” of dynamically revolutionary change in the Arab Middle East. These bottom-up revolts happened in societies such as Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, where in the 1950s and 1960s army-led revolutions and coups unseated monarchical power-holders. The tensions that have historically characterized the center – periphery dyad are not necessarily flaws where the Arab Spring is concerned. Instead, they have set into motion processes that doomed

168

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

excessively authoritarian structures of power to historical exit and signaled the return of the periphery to politics. These centrifugal processes are described below. (1) The “over-stated Arab state” breathes its last: This type of Arab state,14 which has historically invested itself with all the attributes of power (mostly coercive, but in varying degrees financial, legal, tribal, ideological, informational, social, etc.) has allocated little or no shared space for normalizing state –society relations, and even less space for societal contests of state power. A great deal of the conflict to be generated over the next decade will be produced by the state’s resistance to change. Since its emergence into territorial existence, the Arab post-colonial state’s design of this brand of statecraft fulfils what might be called “total politics” or “total state.” That is, a state with a notable blind spot: the “unoccupied sites of power” (such as in moral and distributive fields). This has resulted, especially after 2011, in a power vacuum, discussed in point 2. (2) There is a power vacuum: Power is clearly up for grabs, and the contests and counter-contests take many forms, ranging from civic (political, transparent, peaceful, legal) to unruly (secret, violent, illegal). Varying degrees of this power vacuum grip many an Arab polity and society. It is pronounced and unfolding in some (populist republics) and latent in others (monarchies). (3) People occupy vacant spaces: It is diverse and varies in substance, impact, and sustainability across the Arab Middle East. Largely, it points to emerging, ongoing, hidden, or dormant attempts below the level of the state, by society to carve out a space for occupying vacuous sites of power (including in the realm of coercion: e.g. Al Qaeda, Houthis, ISIS and affiliates). However, this should not preclude civic struggles such as for good government and more equitable distribution. It is within these unoccupied sites that power seems to be susceptible to renegotiation, contest, protest, and antisystemic challenges. By and large, these are the sites where society (civic and uncivil, legal and unruly) strikes back. This struggle manifests itself either as an urge (a) to invent the vocabulary of selfrecognition and self-existence as well as the attendant thoughtpractice for speaking to and responding to the decaying

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

169

authoritarian post-colonial state (newly emerging democratic discourses, forces and voices, Islamist and secular, liberal and illiberal); and (b) to cohabit or populate the unoccupied sites of power, as the new legitimate power-holder and claimant (e.g. militias in Libya, Houthis in Yemen, ISIS in Syria and Iraq). (4) Society advances as the state retreats: In every retreat/absence by the state, there emerges the potential for advancement/presence by society. The Arab Spring’s seismic political activity will be marked by contests at the boundaries of state authority/power and societal reclamation of some of that power. These are trends that are integral to the shape of both domestic and international politics as well as the field of IR, to be witnessed by the Arab Middle East over the next decade, as has been noted in this chapter.

The Arab Spring: Progenitor of Democratization? Two observations are in order. First, there is an aspect of “contagion” that is useful to illuminate the nexus between indigenous agency or home-grown push to reform and the exogenous impact on democratization. The Arab Spring is one dimension of how to relate IR to democratization. It exemplifies the local energy summoned to democratize as well as the external dynamics that condition democratization or inhibit it (as argued in the final section of this chapter). The nexus between IR and democratization is under-studied. Order (security) not equality (freedom) has historically been the area singled out for scholarly investigation as a progenitor of stability, alliances, modernization-cum-development, oil-based economies (rentierism), and now terrorism. Comparative politics students concerned with questions of democratic transition in this region have tended to look at political culture, Islam and Islamism, and recently civil society. External dimensions are seldom analyzed. Second, preoccupation today by the US and the EU with democratization in the Arab Middle East is relatively new when compared with other regions. The US, for instance, has since the nineteenth century actively promoted democracy in Central and Latin America and the Caribbean, be it unevenly at times and through nondemocratic means throughout the twentieth century. Such a commitment, not always motivated by principled ideals but by

170

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

realpolitik and by pursuit of national interests, necessitated extreme measures such as intimidation (e.g. in Nicaragua) and invasion (e.g. in Panama, Haiti).15 President Reagan’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) accorded priority for democracy promotion during the 1980s to Europe and Asia with little or no attention to the Arab Middle East. The indigenous inheritors of the post-colonial state fare no better than the ex-colons in this regard. No sooner had the elites that were at the vanguard of the nationalist resistance against colonialism “colonized” the newly founded states than they set out to erase all of the vestiges of foreign rule. They dismantled the emergent independent states’ democratic facade, namely, political parties and parliaments. They made no effort to revamp, reform, or found on these institutions more representative and accountable government. The absence of an indigenous contagion effect, a democratic model, from within the Arab region has contributed to the routinization of autocracy. Discussion of democratization in the context of the Arab Spring cannot ignore the notion of peoplehood. Peoplehood has not won outright in its continuous quarrel with authoritarian structures of power. The notion of the “deep state,” often related to Turkey and Egypt, comes to mind as an example of the challenges facing bottom-up democratization and restructuring of the state and citizenship along legal, participatory, inclusive, and accountable means. Nonetheless, peoplehood can be introduced as a conceptual unit of analysis to put into sharp relief the role played by non-state actors in democratic transition, namely, in relation to the Arab Spring. This is an investigation at a very preliminary stage and lacks the long time-span and comparative attention that thus far allow only for tentative observations about the democratic potentialities, much less outcomes, in the context of the Arab Spring. Democratization here is not a reference to a bourgeois notion of democracy since what animates peoplehood, or al-hirak, as noted earlier, are aspirations for an inclusive quasi-Rawlsian notion of justice and a form of redistribution of political and economic goods that serve as a harbinger for freedom or hurriyyah. The crux of al-hirak is public mobilization and organization through self-configuration and reconstructions of a brand of political organization, run by the people and driven by their quest for equality and dignity. Rebellion against authoritarianism does not necessarily

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

171

have a democratizing effect in an institutional sense. Thus far only a few years have lapsed since the uprisings, and the electoral gains may be significant in Tunisia (2011 October Constituent Assembly elections; 2014 parliamentary and presidential elections) but hardly indicative of democratic change in other countries where they were subject to reverses or total breakdowns of order and fledgling democratization (Egypt and Libya – both had elections in 2012). Al-hirak is displayed simply as “occupation in reverse” of spatial, temporal, and discursive fields, which have for so long been constructed, reproduced, and occupied by the postcolonial power-holders. In the quest for freedom and dignity (hurriyyah, karamah), al-hirak is society’s agential deployment against the occupiers of the authoritarian state. Peoplehood facilitates practices whereby bottom-up notions of sovereign identities and participatory citizenship are engendered informally in the public squares of protest. Central to al-hirak is the people’s coming together to ephemerally substitute the authoritarian regimes’ practice, thought, and language of controlling power. Peoplehood thus invents new conceptions of political practice (peaceful protest, civic organization, armed resistance, leaderlessness), thought (a stress on social justice, radical change), and terminology (a mantra of freedom, dignity, public solidarity, revolution, and uprising’s martyrs). Thus the regimes’ routinized notions of stability, loyalty, and deference, for instance, are traded for spontaneously conceived practices, thought, and language. Stability cedes to fluidity, loyalty gives way to hostility and rebellion, and deference to resistance. To borrow a term from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “critical consciousness” is thus forged and invented in the public squares of protest as a necessity to counter the hegemonic order with action, thought, and all kinds of signifiers of opposition and resistance.16 While instantaneous and spontaneous, the critical consciousness summoned in the public squares of protest (e.g. Egypt and Tunisia in 2011) seems to generate the necessary democratic agency to unify the rebellious publics around a spirit beckoning a new beginning. They stand as a united public with unified practice – thought (perhaps dreams) and terminology constitute initial steps toward reconstitution of democratic subjectivities – and rejection of subjection to authoritarian rule and rulers. The Arab Spring constitutes thus far, even if not a progenitor of democracy, an e´lan, an opening, and a space for

172

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

popular empowerment. It will for some time to come be marked out by dialectics between a decaying old order and an emboldened peoplehood that has, across boundaries of geography and culture, tasted directly or through neighborly experiments the sweet victory over challenged dictators and states.

The Hirak in Syria This section argues that Syria’s originally nonviolent, civil hirak has become almost unrecognizable in the morass of civil and regional war. In 2016, the conflict-ridden country may be regarded as the cautionary tale of the Arab Spring, a far cry from the inspired and inspiring idealistic, creatively energetic peaceful (silmiyyah) uprising of 2011. Hezbollah, Iran, Iraqi militias, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the US, and a deluge of foreign fighters are the most visible players comprising an international roster of actors interfering on behalf of or against Assad’s regime (nizam), opposition fighters, and ISIS. Syria’s conflict is often relegated to the category of inescapable “proxy war.” Yet this label, while technically accurate, may be incomplete. The suggestion here is that the persistently agential dimensions of a selfpropelled popular uprising originally conceived in emancipatory, national yet regionally resonant terms should be neither overlooked nor downplayed. We contend that among the various and fragmented opposition collectivities of the Syrian people, an adaptive resilience and resistance (sumud) is evident in their constantly evolving forms of organization and governance. The local coordination committees (tansiqiyyat) of 2011, tasked with planning protests, media outreach, and even running field hospitals,17 have given way to local councils (majalis mahaliyyah). These administrative units are charged with humanitarian and social welfare service provision18 in territories wrested from regime control. Volunteer civil defense forces (the “White Helmets”) vow to “save the greatest number of lives in the shortest possible time” in areas pummelled by aerial bombardment.19 To avoid unmerciful, often deliberate, Assad airstrikes, activist networks of Syrians within and without the country have worked to upgrade makeshift field hospitals, originally convened in empty orchards or the homes of activists and revolution sympathizers, into more and more sophisticated structures, some built underground.20

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

173

Transformation has also touched the formal political opposition. It has morphed from the Libyan-style Syrian National Council in late 2011 to the Syrian National Coalition (Etilaf) in late 2012, to the High Negotiations Committee incorporating armed opposition figures in late 2015. Changes on the military front are even more dizzyingly fast-paced. Constant alliance-making and -breaking characterizes relations among Free Syrian Army and Islamist factions, their offensives coordinated in “operating rooms” infused with external logistical training and aid by Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the US. The adaptive resilience appears to encompass even Syria’s transnational militants, as in the transfiguration – blessed by the mother “base” – of Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra into Jabhat Fath al-Sham in summer 2016. The fast-shifting square centimeters on the color-coded red, green, black, and yellow maps marking the latest military advances and retreats in Syria are just one optical representation of al-hirak’s constantly changing nature. Most transformations are less rapid or visually dramatic than alternating control of particular towns, villages, and stretches of territory by the regime, opposition, ISIS, and Kurdish forces. But the fluidity of the modes and manifestations of popular mobilization and regime counter-mobilization has been persistent since 2011. Here, the analytic frame threading these changes together is an examination of the revolutionary narratives of Syria’s mobilized public. Self-renewing accounts keep apace of evolving modes of dissidence (from peaceful to armed); escalating modes of regime repression (from low-level artillery to airstrikes, shelling, chemical weapons attacks, and dreaded barrel bombs); an expanding register of anti-opposition forces (from Assad’s army and security forces, to Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, ISIS, and sometimes al-Nusra); and growing governance needs (schooling, nutrition, public service provision, and conflict resolution). Syria’s hirak knows no stasis.

Narrating the Thuwwar and Ahrar Among the most notable dimensions of Syria’s uprising-turned-war has been “the people’s” adamant insistence on self-representation. Selfreflexive narratives are disseminated through an adept employment of technological tools and colored by an unflinching moral urgency.

174

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

This section of the chapter examines the shifting, processual popular mobilization in Syria by highlighting the self-constructions of its revolutionaries in the Levantine country’s version of the Arab hirak. As Francesca Polletta21 notes, the stories and narratives of political actors configure events into meaning-making plots pushing toward normative conclusions, in a discursive form characterized by ambiguity and interpretability. And Charles Tripp has remarked on the “multiple audiences” addressed by revolutionaries in public squares: fellow citizens, the autocrats themselves, and an “external audience.”22 The conscious, almost self-congratulatory narration of the inclusiveness of Syria’s mobilization stresses a staunchly moral imperative (toppling the regime, or isqat al-nizam). It consciously invokes and identifies with universal aspirations to the glittering, malleable concepts of freedom (hurriyyah) and human dignity (karamah), pursued by an agential people (sha’b) constructing itself as revolutionaries (thuwwar) and free people (ahrar). This narrative is constructed, repeated, adapted, and circulated more than just functionally. Its propagation invigorates the revolution and animates a self-emancipating peoplehood. Thus the process of “performing the nation” and reclaiming Assad’s Syria, initiated in the 2011 protests filling alleys and public squares,23 may be kept alive through the reorientation and renewal of revolutionary narratives. This is even as the mobilized peoplehood fragments to splinter not just the pillars of Syrian state sovereignty but also the loose coalition of opposition forces, and perhaps even their visions and values. For Syria’s self-styled revolutionaries, the attempt to topple the Baa’thist regime – in the only Arab republic to brazenly enact inherited rule (tawrith) as Bashar succeeded Hafez in 2000 – is an abiding struggle for freedom. The language of liberty permeates the processes, collectivities, and institutions of Syria’s uprising, starting with the protest chant Hurriyyah! This vocabulary of freedom sticks despite widely acknowledged shortcomings and disunity (of the Free Syrian Army, for instance) or inevitably doomful regime reprisals (barrel bombing of “liberated areas,” as from a foreign occupier). Living out the identity of thuwwar and ahrar is therefore a long-term project. Hama protest singer Ibrahim Qashoush, the mutilation of whose vocal cords and the dumping of his body into the Orontes River reflected regime desperation and hysteria, put it simply: “the Syrian people will not rest/ until they achieve freedom.”24

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

175

Importantly, the revolution unfolds in parallel with those of risen sister Arab publics. Thus the pursuit of freedom in neighboring countries was an emotional (perhaps more than purely rational) trigger for Syria’s hirak. Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya served as “emboldening steppingstones” prompting virtual and physical dissent by Syrian protestors.25 A celebratory solidarity with fellow Arab shu’oob, articulated in chants and ubiquitous hand-written signs, was almost palpable in Syrian protests. Some Fridays – days when Muslim communalism through prayer logistically fed into communalism through dissidence – were even conamed across state borders. The “Friday of Our Sham and Our Yemen” on September 30, 2011, is one such example. Offering jubilant advice, protestors urge Assad to learn from the downfall of his dictator “friends” Mubarak and bin Ali who had “flown,”26 displaced by the emancipatory wrath of Egyptians and Tunisians. The common aspiration for freedom and dignity criss-crosses Arab state borders. Yet the same regional emulation and identification serving as the impetus for Syria’s own uprising may have negatively impacted political strategizing. Writer Khawla Dunia,27 for instance, is doubtful that the Libyan Transitional National Council was a suitable model for Syria’s opposition body. Instead, she suggests, the priority should have been on the representativeness, inclusion, and leadership of the pulsating revolution itself. And arguably, Syria’s political opposition viewed the NATO intervention in Libya that enabled the ousting of Gaddafi as a replicable precedent. This may explain the investment of endless political capital, time, and resources in pursuit of anti-Assad military intervention. Such American action, hoped for by many, would not materialize: Obama’s “red line” was eviscerated by the Russian-mediated 2013 chemical weapons deal with Assad. In addition to at times ill-fitting modeling, also complicating transnational solidarity with fellow Arab publics is a conjoined, simultaneous frustration expressed toward Arab leaders expected to offer more concrete support to Syria’s revolution. The “Qashoush” of Jarjanaz in Idlib province declares, “Massacres, massacres! . . . Fear God, oh Arabs!” with the crowd unabashedly responding, “Oh, Arabs! You have let us down!”28 Diplomatic moves such as the expulsion of Syria from the Arab League did little to stanch the bloodshed in Syria. (Neither, of course, did the uneven and disjointed arming of various ad hoc opposition battalions by regional “Friends of Syria.”)

176

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Another persistent feature of revolutionary narratives has been an insistence on the moral legitimacy of Syria’s uprising. It endures through five years of war, an ever-darkening terrorism plague, and a refugee crisis in the millions. Samar Yazbek, who notes the taboo-breaking nature of her own participation in the uprising as a prominent Alawite writer, asserts that “the essence of the Syrian uprising is moral first and foremost.”29 Early in the uprising, the prime currency of such morality was the mode of resistance itself, the peaceful protests up against inevitable murder, detainment, or torture by Assad’s security and military forces. Thus the repetition of the protest chant “peaceful!” or Silmiyyah! Revolutionary songs emphasize the absolute vulnerability and self-sacrifice of unarmed protestors, expressing an incredulity and sorrow for young lives snuffed out by a terrified regime, as in Samih Shukair’s Ya Haif (What a Shame). Also significant in the moral currency of the revolution has been its inclusiveness – both narrated and enacted – particularly of women and confessional or ethnic minorities. Here protest chants of “Muslims and Christians” (Islam oo masihiyyah) and “national unity” (wahdah wataniyyah) are notable. The naming of protest Fridays is also noteworthy – for instance, Good Friday (Al Jum’ah al-‘Azeemah), a gesture to the country’s Christians, as well as the use of the Kurdish word for freedom (azadi). Female presence has also been conspicuous. Journalist Zaina Erhaim catalogues the women’s local coordinating committee in conservative Douma. In this Damascus suburb, women engaged in initially silent anti-regime protests in order to minimize a local backlash by opponents of a vocal public female presence. These protests developed into full-throated calls for the toppling of the regime, as well as chants urging Douma’s men to “rise up” and “not be afraid.”30

Contestation and Renewal in Revolutionary Narratives The self-renewal of Syria’s revolutionary narratives both highlights and resists the fragmentation wrought by an internationalized war. The opposition in exile, beset by its own internal un-coordination and willingly or unwillingly accepted tentacles of external influence, has been powerless to stop the bloody conflict. Additionally, the entry of terrorism and international counterterrorism efforts into the Syrian amalgam, particularly since late 2014, has predictably complicated both

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

177

the political and military fronts. Operation Inherent Resolve, Russian penetration into Syrian airspace and onto Syrian soil, and de Mistura’s UN-administered political process further obscure the simple normative appeal of the “people vs authoritarian regime” narrative of 2011. This is not to say that the public “story” of the revolution has always been one of smooth consensus. Some socio-political tensions, as between secularists and Islamists, or between advocates of nonviolent opposite armed resistance, crept up in the first year or two of the uprising. At that early stage, disagreements over the naming of Fridays, for example, were peacefully contested in virtual “democratic” forums.31 With the uprising’s militarization, efforts to renew the revolutionary narrative and to re-secure a space for local perspectives challenge both Syrians and a wider global audience in the self-consciously political revolutionary art scene. Efforts hearkening back to the initial technologies of nonviolent protest include Syria’s Mobile Film Festival, sponsored by local councils. Under the slogan “in the beginning, there was the camera,” this initiative seeks to artistically revive the use of the politically potent “tool in peaceful struggle and free express[ion].”32 The critically acclaimed group Abounaddara (“the man with the glasses”) Films adds the “right to image” to the well-known calls for freedom and dignity. From French colonial-Orientalist attributions of Syrian resistance to an infantile, blind religious passion, to the pervasiveness of still-dominant portrayals of rebels as religious extremists, “the Syrian does not resemble his image, and never has.”33 These cinematographers seek to bridge the representation gap by producing short films documenting everyday life in revolutionary Syria. One such video chronicles the bloody banality of life retrieved from death’s devastation. A man salvages a sum of money from the pocket of his cousin, blown to pieces by a bomb: he pulls out first a hand, then a severed head, until he finds the bills. It is only the next day that he and his friends realize, after spotting the unmistakably red-haired scalp of the missing Khaldoun, “We had buried three people in two graves without realizing,” because the corpses were so mutilated.34 Citizen-journalists also contribute to the videography of the uprising, as in Hadi al-Abdullah’s minidocumentary series The Spirit of the Revolution, whose opening scene poses the provocative question: “Why did we start a revolution?” The narrator reminds audiences of a life in Syria where walls had ears, detention and torture were commonplace, and intrusive corruption was rampant.35

178

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Among the ironies of the bloody Syrian free-for-all is the built-in paradox of a mobilized peoplehood articulating a clear sense of national consciousness against a backdrop of presumed regional and international solidarity. The expectation of the uprising’s moral resonance became an impetus for seeking (and to differing degrees, securing) international support, variously conceived, to the armed opposition in particular. The result has been the fracturing of Syrian state structures (most notably, the national army’s descent into militias) and of the revolutionary bodies themselves. Thus the uneasy dynamic between an initially ardently Syrian peoplehood and regional-international reinforcement has wrought longterm damage compounding the more immediate infrastructural and human destruction perpetrated by Assad and his external backers. Political deadlock within the SNC and Etilaf, exacerbated by the contestforged influence of external “friends,” has become almost a mockery. Military fragmentation has been even more pronounced. Regional actors (the Gulf states and Turkey) financed and funneled arms to various opposition battalions fighting against Assad forces in turn bolstered by Iran and Hezbollah, spurring the internationalization of a conflict superimposed on local war-making across Syria.36 Foreign influence has not been limited to logistical and military support, of course. Activistwriter Ahmad Abazeid assesses the rising symbolic capital of a largely imported salafi-jihadism, evident in the rejection of the revolutionary flag and the “Free Syrian Army” designation, easing al-Nusra and ISIS recruitment. This trend is due in part, he suggests, to the weakness of traditional Syrian Islamist actors (the Shami school, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Zaid group, and even intellectual Salafism): they could not bridge a common nonideological, spiritual Syrian-Islamic identification with the larger political revolutionary project.37 Still, what may be termed the jihadist Islamization of parts of Syria’s (particularly militarized) hirak, in its extreme forms working directly against other anti-regime fighters, has not yet stifled 2011-style revolutionary narratives. Sometimes messages directly address external actors such as the US. Thus former President Obama’s disparaging reference to the FSA (parts of which received CIA support) as a collection of “farmers, dentists, and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad,” making any expectations of a victory a “fantasy,”38 did not go unnoticed. Protestors in Kafranabel, Idlib, baldly responded with a characteristic banner reading,

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

179

“Yes, Mr. President Obama! Dentists, farmers, and students are the ones who lead dignity revolutions; criminals kill while idiots talk.”39 For many Syrians, their international “friends” are thus anything but, barely discernible in practice from openly pro-Assad Russia in an international regime co-administered by Washington and Moscow. Leftist intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh40 sees the US – despite much of its diplomatic-speak – as “opposing the fall” of Assadism. For him, this American position is evident in the chemical weapons deal of 2013 and the single-minded focus on counterterrorism, to the neglect of revolutionary goals and struggles. In 2016, the affirmative imagery of the roaring vibrancy of 2011 protests gives way to now-commonplace footage of bombs hollowing out buildings and mangled human bodies. Even the internationally circulated symbolism of martyrs has in large part shifted. The mutilated, bloated corpse of daring child dissenter Hamza al-Khatib is replaced by the deceptively peaceful appearance of drowned child refugee Aylan Kurdi. Still, protests spread again in Syria in March 2016 – ongoing months later in some places like Ma’rrat al-Nu’man – in “liberated” territories temporarily relieved from aerial bombardment. The striking preponderance of revolution flags, the recitation and reworking of protest chants from the uprising’s early days, the hashtag #TheRevolutionContinues, and even altercations with Jabhat al-Nusra confirm the existence of a thread tenuously linking peaceful praxis to the grind of unending battles. Some form of the thawrah batters on.

Conclusion This chapter has conceptualized a mobilized “peoplehood” across the various locales of the Arab Spring inaugurated in 2011, when popular demands for freedom and dignity gave rise to a new regional politics of state – society contestation. Understood thus, al-hirak accounts for revolutionary – counter-revolutionary and bottom-up – top-down cycles of action and reaction, often spilling over state borders across the Arab geography. Apparent is a plurality of actors (non-state, state, regional, and international), forms of political action (ruly vs unruly), directions of political change (democratization vs. authoritarian consolidation) – sometimes within a single country case. Militarization and internationalization have precipitated state breakdown in Syria, as the analysis of constantly adapting revolutionary narratives has shown.

180

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Yet “civil” popular mobilization, if emaciated, persists alongside multidirectional armed challenges to state authority and even territorial control. Inconclusiveness is the reigning state of affairs. But across the Arab world, it is clear that publics and non-state actors will continue to practice varied techniques of dissent and devise new ones. States will respond with new mixtures of co-optation and repression, some through seeking external reinforcement as the pre-2011 Arab state further erodes. Whether democratization trends will further manifest in the region is an open question. But for the foreseeable future, the Arab hirak appears poised to stay, unwelcomed by Arab autocrats.

Notes 1. This publication was made possible by the NPRP award (NPRP9 309-5041) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of The Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors. 2. Larbi Sadiki, “The Arab Spring: ‘the people’ in international relations,” in L. Fawcett (ed.), International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 325 – 55. 3. Larbi Sadiki, Rethinking Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). 4. United Nations Development Programme, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations (New York: United Nations Publications, 2003). 5. Larbi Sadiki, “Popular uprisings and Arab democratization,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32/1 (2000), pp. 71 – 95. 6. Sadiki, “The Arab Spring: ‘the people’ in international relations.” 7. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 1974). 8. Samir Amin, The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles (London, UK: Zed Press, 1978). 9. Andre Gunder Frank, Dependent Accumulation (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978). 10. Charles Tripp, Islam and the Moral Economy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 13 – 15. 11. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy 1925– 1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). 12. Nazih Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London, UK: I.B.Tauris, 1995). 13. Larbi Sadiki, Heiko Wimmen, and Layla Al-Zubaidi (eds), Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power (London, UK: Routledge, 2013).

A MATTER

OF

PROTEST

181

14. Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State. 15. Laurence Whitehead, “The imposition of democracy: the Caribbean,’ in L. Whitehead (ed.), The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 45 – 60. 16. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000). 17. Hamza Al-Mustafa, Al Majaal al-’Aam al-iftiradi fi al-thawrah al Sooriyah: Khasa’is, Itijahat, Aliyyat (The Virtual Public Sphere of the Syrian Revolution: Characteristics-Trends-Mechanisms of Shaping Public Opinion ) (Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2012), pp. 153– 8. 18. National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, “Al Majalis alMahaliyyah al-Sooriyah” [Syrian Local Councils], 2012. Available at http:// www.etilaf.org/%D9%85%D9%83%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A7% D9%81/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AC%D8%A7%D9%84%D8% B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9.html (accessed October 6, 2015). 19. Syria Civil Defense, 2016. Available at http://syriacivildefense.org/ (accessed September 10, 2016). 20. Ellen Francis, “The war on Syria’s doctors,” Foreign Policy, August 11, 2016. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/11/the-war-on-syrias-doctorsassad-medicine-underground/ (accessed August 13, 2016). 21. Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 22. Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 140. 23. Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian uprising: imagining and performing the nation,’ Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11/3 (2011), pp. 538 – 49. 24. Hama Protest, 2011a. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼ XyZW0_cOqF0 (accessed October 30, 2014). 25. Wendy Pearlman, “Diffusion mechanisms as stepping stones: qualitative evidence from Syria,” POMEPS. Available at https://pomeps.org/2016/07/18/ diffusion-mechanisms-as-stepping-stones-qualitative-evidence-from-syria/ (accessed February 20, 2017). 26. Hama Protest, 2011b. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼43Al1 Sk7MLc (accessed October 30, 2014). 27. Khawla M. Dunia, “Hal al-Majlis al-Intiqali Huwa al-Hal . . . Wa Ma Hiya alMaham al Aniyya lil Thawrah al-Sooriyya Kai Tantasir?” (“Is the transitional council the solution . . . and what are the current tasks for the Syrian revolution to succeed?”), Al-Quds al-Arabi, 2011. Available at www.alqudsalarabi.info/ index.asp?fname¼data\2011\ 2011\09\09-07\07qpt980.htm (accessed October 10, 2015). 28. Jarjanaz Protest, June 8, 2012. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch? v¼e0ovTebgGRU (accessed October 30, 2014).

182

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

29. Samar Yazbek, A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, trans. Max Weiss (London: Haus Publishing, 2011), p. 160. 30. Zaina Erhaim, “Sayyidat Douma – Reef Dimashq: Nasawiyyat bil Fitrah wa Thawriyyat bil Tandhim” (“Douma’s Ladies – Damascus countryside: feminists by instinct and revolutionaries by organization”), Al-Hayat, November 19, 2011. Available at http://www.alhayat.com/Details/318296 (accessed September 9, 2016). 31. Amal Hanano, “Any given Friday,” Foreign Policy, April 18, 2012. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/18/any-given-friday/ (accessed October 5, 2015). 32. Syria Mobile Film Festival, 2015. Available at http://syriamobilefilms.com/en/ (accessed September 11, 2016). 33. Abounaddara, “Al-Soorah did al-Soori” (“The image vs. the Syrian”), Al-Hayat, December 5, 2013. Available at http://daharchives.alhayat.com/issue_archive/ Hayat%20INT/2013/5/12/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%88%D8% B1%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9% 88%D8%B1%D9%8A.html (accessed September 11, 2016). 34. Abounaddara, “The mysterious disappearance of Khaldoun,” October 17, 2014. Available at https://vimeo.com/109216364 (accessed October 30, 2014). 35. “Ruh al-Thawrah” (“The spirit of the revolution”), Balagh for Media, 2014. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼ z9bRLduxm-I (accessed February 1, 2015). 36. Yezid Sayigh, “Syria’s very local regional conflict,” Carnegie Middle East Center, June 9, 2014. Available at http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/06/09/syria-s-verylocal-regional-conflict/hd7i (accessed October 4, 2015). 37. Ahmad Abazeid, “Siyasat al-Din al-Mukhabba’: Kaifa fashala al-Islamiyyun fi Harb al-Afkar?” (“The politics of hidden religion: how did Islamists fail in the war of ideas?”), Nama Center for Research and Studies, March 12, 2015. Available at http://nama-center.com/ActivitieDatials.aspx?id¼30525 (accessed February 26, 2017). 38. CBS News, “Obama: notion that Syrian opposition could have overthrown Assad with US arms a ‘fantasy,’” CBS News, June 20, 2014. Available at www. cbsnews.com/news/obama-notion-that-syrian-opposition-could-overthrow-assada-fantasy/ (accessed October 8, 2015). 39. Occupied Kafranbel, 2015. Available at https://twitter.com/sebastianx/ status/482480079055126528/ (accessed February 26, 2017). 40. Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, “Majoritarian Syria: justice in conflict resolution,” trans. Yasser EzZayyat, Al-Jumhuriya, October 20, 2016. Available at http:// aljumhuriya.net/en/syrian-revolution/majoritarian-syria-justice-in-conflictresolution (accessed November 4, 2016).

CHAPTER 8 MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT OF “SAFE CITIZENS”: SOVEREIGNTY, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, AND THE ARAB UPRISINGS Amentahru Wahlrab

Introduction The so-called “Arab Spring” is now legendary. Numerous media outlets reported the powerful impact that social media had, first, on the protestors in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, then, on the Egyptian city center of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and, later, throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). While the root causes of the protests in Tunisia were apparent to many within the country (poverty, unemployment, government corruption, etc.), tight media control kept the initial protests small, limited to the more traditional social networks of family members and friends of 26-year-old street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire on December 17, 2010.1 Bouazizi’s friends and family threw their spare change at the governor’s gate and yelled, “Here is your bribe.”2 This powerful, symbolic protest presumably would not have spread without the help of the social networking website Facebook, where people posted news and videos of the protests. Some also noted, for example, the role of music as a source

184

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

of strength in both the early days of the protest in Tunisia and later throughout the uprisings. For example, on November 7, 2010, the Tunisian rapper El General (Hamada Ben Amor) uploaded his song “Rais Le Bled” (“President, Your Country”) onto Facebook. In a country that forbids politically conscious bands from performing gigs, El General’s lyrics were incendiary: “My President, your country is dead / People eat garbage / Look at what is happening / Misery Everywhere / Nowhere to sleep / I’m speaking for the people who suffer / Ground under feet.”3 Journalists from the Arab news source Al Jazeera picked up the story from Facebook. In the end, the protests that brought down the Ben Ali government of 23 years will be preserved in the pages of the newspaper of record as having been started by a video posted on Facebook, shared with friends, and eventually picked up by media outlets worldwide.4 The real story, however, is that citizens became a threat to the state’s sovereignty and the social order; in a word, they became “unsafe.”5 It is my contention that most of the narratives of the Arab uprisings were attempts to justify violence against citizens perceived to be “unsafe” according to standards set by the modern state, specifically the US and its allies (both in the MENA and in the global north). Protestors were depicted as liberal, secular, and feminist and thus “safe” according to the (liberal) modern state. Or, they were depicted as illiberal, Muslim, or misogynistic and thus threats or “unsafe.” By extension, these narratives of protest and state reaction revealed the state’s own insecurity. Even more frightening to the US and its allies in the Middle East and North Africa was the unpredictable nature and speed of the seemingly new social movements of the uprisings. Drawing on Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, and the work of Foucault and Castells, as well as the work on design by theorists like Paola Antonelli, Cynthia Weber focuses on safe citizenship in three kinds of societies: sovereign, disciplinary, and networked societies. Although she applies the concepts of safe and unsafe citizenship to the US context, her concept is versatile and broad enough to be applied in any state-security context.6 In these three contexts, “safe citizens” must behave differently if also in overlapping ways: In Hobbesian sovereign society marked by an exchange of protection between sovereign and citizen, the state’s design principle for safe citizenship is expressed as the obligation of

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

185

citizens to die for their country. In Foucauldian disciplinary society governed by biopolitics and an ethics of care, safe citizens are expected to care for their country by caring for themselves. And in network society marked by the electronic circulation of information and images, safe citizens are expected to immerse for their country, by being one with and of state/society networks [. . .]. [S]afe citizenship designs accumulate, overlap, and intersperse with one another as they compete for dominance within a particular state.7 State leaders displayed their insecurities as they ramped up police and other security forces in order to shore up the hard boundaries of their states. Given the fluid nature of the identity of these new change agents, violence initially backfired in Tunisia, making it the first but not the last uprising.8 By the end of 2011, protests had erupted in almost every country in the Middle East and North Africa. The interplay between unsafe citizens and insecure states created an evolving cocktail of fluid identities. Their fluidity confounded states in the region as well as international powerhouses like the US who seemed to fluctuate between support for protestors and support for traditional allies in the region. This chapter demonstrates the co-evolutionary relationship between citizenship and sovereignty as it played out in the Arab uprisings.

The National Security State and its Need for Safe Citizens The modern state is usually understood as that entity which has a monopoly on the use of legitimate physical violence within a given territory.9 Max Weber famously elaborated on this definition, stating that the modern state is an institutional association of rule [. . .] which has successfully established the monopoly of physical violence as a means of rule within a territory, for which purpose it unites in the hands of its leaders the material means of operation, having expropriated all those functionaries of ‘estates’ who previously had command over these things in their own right, and has put itself, in the person of its highest embodiment, in their place.10

186

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

It is important to point out that in his elaboration, Weber drops the qualifying adjective “legitimate” originally placed in front of “physical violence.” The implication of this definition for my argument is that the modern state need not make a case for legitimacy when it uses violence. This would also fit in with Cynthia Weber’s conception of sovereign citizenship mentioned above. Later theorists of the state have similarly emphasized the state’s “intimate” relationship with violence. In Charles Tilly’s account of the development of the state, we understand and derive the modern state from what he calls a “protectionracket state” that creates crises and generates reasons to be fearful and afraid.11 Paul Amar further elaborates Tilly’s observation by explaining that “this racket state stages fears and produces real dangers in order to generate public terror and insecurity. In effect, racketeers make you beg for rights and protection from the dangers produced by security formations themselves.”12 Following this logic, the disciplines of political science and international relations accept and teach the view of the liberal state as something that arises, often, out of conflict and war. In turn, we derive from this state development the liberal state, where war is understood as an opportunity for people within states to demand rights, as a unique moment and opportunity to fight for rights.13 Thus, it follows that states ultimately grant rights to citizens as a result of contestation. As Paul Starr insists, the liberal state and its laws are freedom’s power, the indispensable basis of freedom’s survival. Liberalism isn’t just a set of fine aspirations. Historically, it has emerged from the pressures of political conflict, domestic and international, not least of all from the pressures of war.14 Following this logic, the modern state becomes the national security state; yet, it remains, in the liberal view, that entity which secures the rights of its citizens.15 This story fails to account for the ways that even the liberal-modern state, let alone the authoritarian state, rests on the continuation of violence. The liberal view has a number of detractors when it comes to the empirical reality of citizens and sovereignty. By analyzing the Arab Spring revolutions, these flaws and contradictions become apparent. Before proceeding to these critical views, it will be helpful to reread

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

187

Charles Tilly’s conception of state formation because it offers a useful way to interpret the Arab uprisings as the reassertion of state sovereignty by showing the kind of contestation required to create a liberal, rightsprotecting state. Specifically, Tilly saw four conditions that favored the concession of rights from reluctant rulers; these conditions came either directly from war or from preparations for war: (1) the claimant and the object of claims each can reward or punish the other in some significant way; (2) they are in fact bargaining over those rewards and punishments; (3) one or both also bargains with third parties who have an interest in the claims in question; (4) the three or more parties to the claims thus constituted have durable identities and relations with each other.16 Tilly’s analysis assumes that once the bargaining is finished, and an agreement has been reached, the liberal state is born and that it immediately begins working to protect its citizens from that point onward. In at least two cases of uprisings these criteria seem to have been met. Massive protests erupted over the course of 2011 with a seemingly consistent set of demands. For example, Lisa Anderson argues that these common themes included demands for personal dignity and responsibility. Further, she observes that the universal condemnation of the failure of the old regimes to clearly and consistently distinguish between the public treasury and the privy purse or private household of the rulers [. . .] reflected not only moral revulsion, but a principled embrace of the equality of citizenship and a new awareness of the value and opportunities in the rule of law.17 Anderson’s view is not uncontested. Ziad Abu-Rish explains that while some Jordanians made signs calling for regime change, observers “misread the presence within demonstrations and online discussions of calls for the fall of the regime [. . .]. The fact was that, at the same protest, some chants called for the king to take corrective action.”18 Thus, in spite of the strong, even durable, identities of the protestors, the authoritarian states in question have gained the upper hand and would appear to validate the view that the Arab Spring has turned back into

188

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Winter.19 Yet the continuing tenuous nature of these states illustrates why all modern states, especially authoritarian ones, need safe citizens in order to remain secure. It should also be noted that in nearly all the cases of MENA uprisings the authoritarian state in question had spent a considerable part of its recent history attempting to crush the formation of “durable identities.”20 Still, working class movements have persisted throughout the MENA in spite of the brutality of the various dictators controlling the states in the region. Fawaz Gerges confirms this view, noting that, “Half a century of political authoritarianism has neither devoured civil society nor broken its will to resist.”21 While news coverage sensationalized a Facebook revolution, it merits stating that workers went on strike all over Egypt in support of protests in the squares. The long-standing associations helped make possible eventual conversion of state militaries. As Chibli Mallat and Edward Mortimer point out, “[f]or the non-violent movement, the turning point in the revolution is the moment when the dictator can no longer rely on his apparatus of repression to shoot in the unnamed crowds.”22 Still, the Tunisian and Egyptian states were exceptional for their military establishments’ siding with the protestors against the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes. In Bahrain and Syria the security forces were aided by outside powers against the protestors. In Libya and Syria the initially nonviolent protests ultimately collapsed into civil wars as outside powers aided various sides by providing weapons, troops/advisors, and air support. Whereas Jordan saw its government changed while remaining a monarchy, Saudi Arabia saw increased payouts to its population. Cynthia Weber captures the anthropomorphized fear felt by the modern state with regards to citizens when she states that, “From the state’s point of view, the [Weberian] citizen/violence relationship is inherently unsafe because citizens challenge both the state’s claim to hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and a monopoly on the legitimate interpretation of the citizen/violence relationship.”23 Significant elements within authoritarian states operate solely to keep citizens in line, to make them safe.24 Mark Neocleous argues provocatively that “[t]he point of pacification is to produce workers and thus the foundation of capital; pacification is primitive accumulation.”25 In other words, safe citizens are those citizens who are productive within the capitalist political economy; unsafe citizens are not. In this reading, the state serves capital, not citizenship.

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

189

The tension between the elites who control the state and the masses who press for expansion of rights that erupted in 2010, while embodying the requirements for the creation of rights-bearing states, does not actually produce, in the short term, rights-bearing states. In addition, critics like Amar argue instead that the national security state is being transformed into what he calls the “human security state,” an intensely dynamic arrangement where competing morality claims fight for control over who gets protected by the state.26

Making Revolutionaries out of Safe Citizens A critical literature has emerged that contests this liberal view of the state as primarily the defender of individual rights. For example, Cynthia Weber’s research asks a question that is helpful to understanding what’s going on in the MENA and elsewhere: “What was modern liberal citizenship designed to do in the first place?”27 She observes that to guarantee their security, states have long-sought to create or design “safe citizens” who do not threaten them. Weber draws on the work of political theorist Thomas Hobbes and his notion of the “artificial man” that is the “body politic” in his classic work, Leviathan. Noting that this is the starting point for discussions and debates about sovereignty and citizenship, Weber points out that, “Citizenship was designed to provide [. . .] insecure states with protection from their insecuring citizens.”28 Further, she draws from scholarship on design, noting that, at its core, design is about “designing safe living.”29 Ultimately, she concludes that states, even liberal ones, behave in selfinterested ways that actually betray individual rights. The Western responses to the Arab and African uprisings of 2011 offer further evidence of Weber’s view that the liberal modern “designer citizen” is “unstable.” The “insecuring citizens” in Tahrir Square are, therefore, a threat not only to Egypt’s government but also to the liberal modern principle of sovereignty. Tahrir, and other liberation squares, is, instead, a threat to the security of the state, in general, because, rather than the product of globalization’s “digital herd,”30 to borrow a phrase from Thomas Friedman, it is the necessary outgrowth of the postcolony.31 Simply put, the state does not fear the herd, but it definitely fears movements that seek to overthrow it. Following Juan Cole, the state fears revolutionaries and revolutions, with revolution defined in the

190

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

generative sense: “involving a widespread popular demand for systemic change, accompanied by a repertoire of mass social action.”32 Thus, unlike the conventional wisdom on sovereignty, the liberal modern state is not the protector of citizens. Its true reason for being is more selfserving and self-referential: State insecurity is understandable given the nature of its relationship with its citizens: From the citizen’s point of view, the citizen/violence relationship is unsafe because the state’s offer of protection to citizens in exchange for their commitment to become agents of violence for the state means that the state both protects and endangers citizens.33 Thus, the design itself is flawed, according to Weber. The nature of the state–citizen relationship is that both citizen and state are perpetually competing because they are perpetually insecure. According to Weber, the state presumably protects them [citizens] when it gives them security, and it endangers them when it demands security from them (although occasionally the provision of security itself may endanger citizens). From the points of view of both states and citizens, then, the citizen/violence relationship is inherently unsafe, and this unsettles states as much as it unsettles citizens.34 This instability creates unsafe citizens as a byproduct of the design flaw. Subsequently, unsafe citizens become revolutionaries out of necessity, out of recourse against the inherently insecure state. Unfortunately for those revolutionaries in the MENA, the sovereign state response varied depending on its regime type and what role it played in the larger, global power game.

The Sovereign State Response to Revolutionary Unsafe Citizens Before narrowing in on authoritarian and Western responses to the uprisings, this section begins by recapitulating the post-independence state. In the post-independence era, African and Middle Eastern states

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

191

and their elite representatives often compromised with the demands made by their revolutionary unsafe citizens. Writing in the wake of Tahrir and the initial uprisings, Firoze Manji states that “whatever one might have to say about the shortcomings of the post-independence governments in Africa [. . .] we have to acknowledge their extraordinary achievements over a relatively short period of time after independence.”35 Manji’s point is easy to forget, especially when most media relentlessly portrays African dreams turning into nightmares: Somalia, DRC, Sudan, to name a few common cases. When considering the international political economic policies of structural adjustment, conditionalities, debt, and “barriers to trade,” one rarely hears what should be an obvious question: where do these poor countries get all those state-owned enterprises in the first place? The assumption is, usually, that they were granted them by their colonial masters. The truth is more complicated, often heavily informed by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, and pressured by their own newly revolutionized citizens, the leaders of post-independence countries implemented policies that helped the poor.36 The success of their policies is recorded in the various gains made in life expectancy, literacy, access to clean drinking water, and other markers of human development.37 In the case of Somalia, even Siyad Barre is praised, for example, by Julius Nyerere: “The Somalis are practicing what we in Tanzania preach.”38 Egypt operated similarly. Starting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, an increasingly radicalized population resisted British colonialism. After winning independence from Britain, Egypt’s military government “vastly expand[ed] the educational system” and “[b]etween 1960 and 1970, the average wage of the typical worker doubled, under the impact of Abdel Nasser’s policies of import substitution and stateled industrialization.”39 Land redistribution was one of the primary concerns of post-independence leaders and served to make good on promises made to the masses during the anticolonial period. Of course, it was this ruling bargain that ultimately laid the structural foundation for the creation of future unsafe citizens. As revolutionary governments turned inward for personal gain and outward for great power sponsors, the past became prologue. In what has commonly been referred to as the lost generation, the process of economic/corporate globalization has dispossessed citizens of the global south of their post-independence gains.40 Thus, the so-called

192

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Arab Spring was simultaneously an uprising by the dispossessed and a narrative rewritten by the West in an attempt to make Arab citizens “safe” and the states they inhabited “secure.”

The Authoritarian Attempt to Make Unsafe Citizens Safe Middle East scholars have described a “ruling bargain” between elites and the masses. This initially resulted in gains in what the United Nations refers to as the “quality of life,” a basket of goods including life expectancy, infant mortality, access to clean drinking water, and literacy. This bargain allowed states in the MENA to persuade their recently revolutionary citizens to become safe. As one scholar argues in the case of post-independence Egypt, “the Egyptian government used economic incentives to gain the compliance of the citizenry and reward those sectors of society it claimed to represent.”41 Regarding the broader Middle East, Ziad Abu-Rish notes, “[t]hose remaining segments of the population that dissented were met with continuous state violence.”42 However, recent scholarship has noted an evolution in this bargain whereby bottom-up strategies of dissent force reforms based on what citizens want.43 The Arab and African uprisings provide a window to see this evolution of state ontology. According to the above analysis, Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak were ousted as a product of the clash between insecure states and their revolutionary unsafe citizens. However, images of those tensions in places like Sidi Bouzid and Tahrir Square that spread around the world via the internet triggered state insecurity and provoked fear from those whose power and wealth was generated with the help of the modern state. These acts did not force all states to crumble, however, as most countries continue to exist in agonistic relationships with their citizens. Further, it is the reactions to the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings by other regimes in the Middle East and Africa that best capture the modern state’s anxiety. The wildfire-like unpredictability of the uprisings terrified elites the world over. So tenuous was the state – citizen relationship that one social critic noted regarding Tunisia’s youth activists, all “it took [was] a rapper to light a firecracker and lob it at Tunisia’s youth.”44 That rapper, El General, was later arrested by the Tunisian police but was released after several days of public protest. His release further catalyzed the uprising in Tunisia and beyond as Al Jazeera

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

193

and other news stations picked up his story and his Facebook-released song.45 Tunisia and Egypt offer windows through which to view the national insecurity over such unsafe citizens. Between December 17, 2010 and January 9, 2011, protests spread throughout Tunisia as a result of organizing by youth activists and traditional political parties. By all accounts, the slogans and the demands were entirely secular and human rights-focused – with cries for dignity and respect dominating the protest narrative.46 Tunisian security forces were seen beating and shooting protestors at events where the police outnumbered the nonviolent protestors. Ben Ali criticized the protestors as being violent and anti-state: This is a negative and anti-civil behavior that presents a distorted image of our country and impedes the flow of investors and tourists, which impacts negatively on job creation, while we need them to curb joblessness. Law will be enforced rigorously against these people.47 It is useful to read the above statement through the lens of Cynthia Weber’s state – citizen tension. Here Ben Ali can be seen attempting to justify the state’s monopoly on violence while simultaneously trying to maintain control over the interpretation of the citizen – violence relationship. In the first part he insists that good/safe citizens do not participate in sit-ins, protest marches, rallies, or, for that matter, any form of critique. After all, the social contract dictates that the citizen gives up certain rights when it becomes a part of the state. However, Ben Ali appears to give up the argument even as he makes it, as the compromise includes protection by the state. In Tunisia’s case, the state has reneged on its part of the deal: “we need them to curb joblessness.” The fact of joblessness lets the cat out of the proverbial bag. The emphasis remains, however, on the role the protestors presumably play in creating joblessness, thus deflecting blame from Ben Ali onto the unsafe citizen who is now doubly unsafe because the act of protest (the first instance of state insecurity) in turn creates joblessness (the second instance of state insecurity). In the final instance, Ben Ali attempts to reassert the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence: “Law will be enforced rigorously against these people [read: unsafe citizens].”

194

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

In an apparent victory for the unsafe citizens, or perhaps just recognition on Ben Ali’s part that he had lost, Ben Ali offered a number of concessions to the protestors. As Raqib reports, In a bid to calm the protests, Ben Ali offered unprecedented concessions. It was announced that he had fired his interior minister, Rafik Belhaj Kacem. Addressing the protesters’ anger against high unemployment, Ben Ali promised to create three hundred thousand jobs between 2011 and 2012, and vowed not to run for reelection in 2014.48 By January 14, 2011, the protestors had had enough and forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia with his family. In addition, his security services were not able to keep the protestors out of the presidential living quarters, and the military refused to fire on the protestors.49 For posterity, Bruce Crumley writing for Time magazine recounts the following: [B]y Friday afternoon Ben Ali had declared a state of emergency. But reports from the streets of Tunis suggested that many soldiers and policemen had crossed over and embraced the protesters. And by day’s end, news organizations were confirming that Ben Ali had fled the government [. . .].50 Crumley’s immortalization, however, attempts to reinterpret these unsafe citizens as, after all, safe by describing the forces of the state working to “embrace” the protestors. National insecurity in the person of Ben Ali is thus replaced with national security as the forces of legitimate violence coopt/make safe the unsafe citizens. Though the Tunisian unsafe citizen is made safe, their moment of victory created a ripple of insecurity throughout Africa and the Arab world. And, as Anderson points out, “had they made the concessions they eventually made even a week or so earlier, all of these presidents would probably have survived.”51 In a larger critique, victory for the unsafe citizen is a loss for the liberal modern state concept. For example, Mahmood Mamdani captures the “official African” response to Tunisia and Egypt/Tahrir Square, writing: “I want to begin with giving you a statement of how Tahrir Square has resonated with official Africa. Not only has this new way of

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

195

doing politics, politics without recourse to arms, bewildered officialdom; it has also sent a chill down many an official spine.”52 Mamdani does not cite Cynthia Weber, but his description of “official” Africa’s response perfectly captures and updates her discussion of the liberal modern state’s attempt to “design” citizens who do not threaten the state. For example, Mamdani discusses the “theater of the absurd” in Uganda, where politicians were arrested and beaten for walking to work in protest of the government’s human rights abuses. The police were unable to explain why people walking to work should be arrested. The description would be funny if it did not describe brutal repression of nonviolent protestors. Mamadani writes: Referring to the leading opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, he said, “Besigye can walk. There is no problem and he does not have to notify the police. However, when he wants to use walking or running as a demonstration, then he has to notify us.” Pressed to explain what was wrong with political walking, the inspector general of police said the opposition’s real intention was to create a Ugandan version of Egypt’s Tahrir Square.53 Whereas the era of decolonization caused the imperial state to fear violent uprisings and the post-9/11 world caused the sole superpower and its allies to be afraid of terrorism, the threat from Tahrir Square bizarrely becomes “political walking.” Faced with a nonviolent and digitally networked citizenry, the liberal modern state occasionally struggles or flounders in its attempt to make safe that which is inherently unsafe. This is all the more difficult due to the destabilizing and decentering power of nonviolent activism pitted against the putatively legitimate violence of the state. Mamdani thus adds, with some admiration, that, “This is why the memory of Tahrir Square today feeds opposition hopes and fuels government fears in many an African polity. To paraphrase a nineteenth century political philosopher, the spectre of Tahrir Square is coming to haunt Africa’s rulers.”54 The epitaph of the uprisings has apparently been written by the MENA states, but the design flaws so elegantly articulated by Cynthia Weber remain. The cracks have only been poorly sealed. Unless real reform comes, revolution is always inevitable.

196

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

The US and the West Attempt to Make Unsafe Citizens Safe The suggestion that the liberal modern state itself is at risk means that it is not just the usual suspects of authoritarian dictators who fear the rise of unsafe citizens. The French state also equivocated, insisting that, according to French Foreign Affairs Minister Miche`le Alliot Marie, “Rather than issuing anathemas, I believe our duty is to make a calm and objective analysis of the situation.”55 Bizarrely unable to accurately name the tyrannical regime of the Ben Ali government, the Culture Minister Fre´de´ric Mitterrand went on to add that, “To say unequivocally that Tunisia is a dictatorship strikes me as completely exaggerated.”56 France was not the only member of the democratic club that was unable to shift gears in the face of the MENA uprisings. The United States also viewed the uprisings with ambivalence and spoke both for and against them. The best example of this ambivalence came when US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged political and social change in the Middle East, noting that “people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order.”57 Clinton’s statements contrasted markedly with White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs’ own, when he was asked if Mubarak’s time had come; he responded, “absolutely not.”58 Obama’s administration supported Mubarak until the last instant.59 But, perhaps eventually seeing the writing on the wall, the Obama administration moved into damage-control mode as it made plans to deal with the possibility of what the New York Times referred to as a “noisy” democracy in Egypt. The most pressing US concern was the possibility that Egypt’s new regime would elect to violate Egypt’s peace accord with Israel. “We don’t think that there is any real chance the Egyptian military would have any interest in seeing the peace accord walked back,” one of Obama’s senior aides said. “But it’s a warning we must issue.”60 US ambivalence toward this “noisy democracy” ultimately became tacit and explicit endorsement of military rule in Egypt.61 Later that year, the US Department of Health and Human Services launched CONPLAN 8888, an emergency preparedness “game” (as in “war game”) that imagined the hypothetical threat of a zombie horde necessitating a zombie survival plan.62 Quite a large number of state agencies have offered similar sounding emergency, disaster, and wargame scenarios using the zombie apocalypse as the imagined enemy/

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

197

threat/Universal Adversary. Mark Neocleous suggests that one way to read these various state entities’ use of the zombie is not as a hip reference to popular culture but rather as a serious attempt by the state to pacify the unruly masses. In this reading of these imagined threat scenarios, the zombie is understood as the worker – specifically, the “disgruntled worker.” In Neocleous’ reading, Workers therefore appear in these documents time and again: a worker at a meat processing plant obtains liquid anthrax and uses it to contaminate meat; a worker in the shipping industry is used for information; equipment is obtained from a worker within the chemical industry in order to help build a dirty bomb. To put it bluntly: the attack chain of the Universal Adversary in the emergency planning scenarios often points directly to the problem of disgruntled workers.63 The HHS scenario was acted out during the same summer that the Arab uprisings, riots in England, and the Occupy Wall Street movement were attracting headlines all over the world. Taking his argument as far out as possible, Neocleous considers that, “In this light, CONPLAN 8888 might be seen as a document for the pacification of the zombie-workers and the re-imposition of neo-liberal strategies for disciplining the workforce under emergency planning and security strategy.”64 Though such an argument might sound “off” to some, it is, at least, more than coincidental that after the uprisings, global elites began planning military responses.

Conclusion: Making Future Revolutionaries The uprisings contradict an academic discipline and a policy and think-tank establishment that long insisted the Arab world was the unlikeliest place to see egalitarian, nonviolent, or democratically inclined social movements emerge. By understanding the tension between insecure sovereignty and unsafe citizens it becomes easier to understand why the response to these nonviolent revolts has been one of real-political horror instead of genuine support as the US and its allies grapple with the prospect of an evolving, if not yet free, Arab world.

198

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

The US has consistently supported authoritarian regimes and overthrown democratic regimes in order to further its narrowly defined national interest in Africa and the Arab world.65 The populations of these states have always been conscious of the sources of their oppression. Various attempts to fight against these US-backed regimes have failed over the years, giving rise to Al Qaeda and ISIS. The logic employed by Al Qaeda is that these authoritarian regimes will never fall so long as the US continues to support them. Ultimately adopting the concept of the “far enemy” to justify attacks like 9/11 on the US and the temporary tactical abandonment of the war against the “near enemy,” Al Qaeda’s strategists and ideologists nevertheless failed to predict the power of nonviolent social change.66 Thus, these nonviolent uprisings pose problems for advocates of violence from above and below.67 Whereas the post-independence struggles were political battles fought over basic political and economic rights, the current wave of revolts are geared toward the dispossession of the gains achieved during the years immediately post-independence. These two periods of time are therefore linked. The first moment is characterized by a revolt against colonialism and the process of resource extraction (mercantilism) that left the colonized people of the world bereft of these basic rights.68 Manji captures this period well: “The struggle for independence in Africa was thus informed, at the base, by the experience of struggles against oppression and brutal exploitation experienced in everyday life.”69 Manji is not completely sanguine about this period of time, though he does believe that colonial oppression did have a Hegelian productivity to it: These struggles constituted the emergence of a tradition of struggles for rights which was organic to and informed by the specific histories and experiences of those involved. Just as the bourgeois revolution which brought the capitalist class into ascendancy in Europe led to the emergence of a particular construct of rights proclaimed against the ancien re´gime, so Africa’s struggle against the colonial yoke gave birth to its own traditions of struggle and the construct of rights.70 The revolts of 2011 and beyond are products of a similar dialectic, though this time between corporate globalization and the globally dispossessed.71 Michaelle Browers argues that this change in state

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

199

behavior is partially augmented by the unlikely aid of socialists and Arab nationalists who “view the state as the last bastion of rationality against the rise of religious fundamentalists, and thus join it in the effort to counter, confront, or eradicate the Islamist threat.”72 However, this shift has also meant a move away from traditional socialist opposition to capitalism. Ironically, in places like Tunisia and Algeria, communist parties “not only shifted toward liberalism but also reflected this shift by eliminating any reference to Marxism or socialism in the names of their parties.”73 Furthering this point, Faleh A. Jabar argues that Arab socialism has made a U-turn in terms of socio economic, regional and even international policies. In countries where there was strong corporate-state economy, often built in the name of the particular form of Arab socialism, there was a fast, downhill move toward economic liberalization (deregulation) or privatization (the sellout of the state sector) or both. The tilt from corporatism to commercialization was coupled with a leaning toward, if not an alliance with, the West.74 This selling out of the state sector is not a done deal. For example, Browers demonstrates that the debates within the socialist and otherwise leftist groups in the Arab world are alive and well. A number of publications in Arabic coming out of the Arab African Research Center in Cairo, Egypt, indicate that Arab socialism is evolving, in part, by focusing on Gramscian concepts like civil society.75 Other authors have also demonstrated that this “alter-globalization” is defined by both its resistance to corporate, neoliberal globalization but more importantly by the view that “another world is possible,” where the interests of the many are viewed to be at least as important as the interests of the few. Manfred Steger’s discussion of this alterglobalization movement describes the concerted efforts of those who have, for example, created the World Social Forum.76 Whereas authors like Thomas Friedman routinely try to diminish the coherency of this alter-globalization movement as “flat-earthers,” Manji and his colleagues add further detail and argue in favor of the view that there is a coherent alternative to economic or corporate globalization.77 In Manji’s insightful telling, corporate globalization created the dispossessed who

200

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

make up the class of people who embody the Arab and African Awakening. Given the dominant narrative of the Arab Spring as a creation of the internet, it is surprising that the Arab Spring has not become a “global Spring” as unsafe citizens around the world revolt against selling out and hollowing out of the democratic state.78 It may just be a coincidence that local protests around the world erupted at nearly the same time and that structural forces play less of a role than local contexts. As Michael Totten argues: “The only things these countries have in common with each other is that they’re in turmoil and that they are Arab.”79 Theory may best be done after the fact, but critique is necessary in the moment, even at the risk of being wrong.

Notes 1. Though several sources reported that he had a university degree, he apparently did not graduate from high school. Rania Abouzeid, “Bouazizi: the man who set himself and Tunisia on fire,” Time, January 21, 2011. Available at http:// content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2044723,00.html (accessed October 21, 2016). For comparison, see Brian Whitaker, “How a man setting fire to himself sparked an uprising in Tunisia,” Guardian, December 28, 2010. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/28/ tunisia-ben-ali (accessed October 21, 2016). 2. Jamila Raqib, “Case study: the Tunisian uprising and protests, December 2010– January 2011,” in G. Sharp (ed.), Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 38. 3. Andy Morgan, “The soundtrack to the Arab revolutions – from fear to fury,” Andy Morgan Writes, March 28, 2011. Available at http://www.andymorganwrites. com/soundtrack-to-the-arab-revolutions-from-fear-to-fury/ (accessed October 21, 2016). 4. Robert Mackey, “Video that set off Tunisia’s uprising,” New York Times, January 22, 2011. Available at http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/video-thattriggered-tunisias-uprising/?ref¼africa (accessed March 16, 2012). On the role of hip hop and social change, see Amentahru Wahlrab, “Speaking truth to power: hip hop and the African awakening,” in M. K. Clark and M. M. Koster (eds), Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). 5. Cynthia Weber, “Designing safe citizens,” Citizenship Studies 12/2 (2008), pp. 125– 42. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 126. 8. For a good timeline of uprisings, see Garry Blight, Sheila Pulham, and Paul Torpey, “Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests,”

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

201

Guardian, January 5, 2012. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/ interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interactive-timeline (accessed October 21, 2016). Max Weber, “The profession and vocation of politics,” in P. Lassman and R. Speirs (eds), Weber: Political Writings (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 310 – 11. Ibid., p. 316. For variations on this kind of argument, see Jeremy Engels, Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010). And David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, rev. edn (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Paul Amar, The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), p. 21. Charles Tilly, “Where do rights come from?,” in L. Mjøset (ed.), Contributions to the Comparative Study of Development (Oslo: Institute for Social Research, 1992), p. 9. Sidney Tarrow, “War, rights, and contention: Lasswell V. Tilly,” in R. M. Smith and S. R. Ben-Porath (eds), Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 35 – 57. Paul Starr, Freedom’s Power: the True Force of Liberalism (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. x (emphasis added). See, Tarrow, “War, rights, and contention: Lasswell V. Tilly.” Tilly, “Where do rights come from?,” p. 10. See also, “War making and state making as organized crime,” in P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, and T. Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Lisa Anderson, “Authoritarian legacies and regime change: towards understanding political transition in the Arab world,” in F. A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 53. Ziad Abu-Rish, “Protests, regime stability, and state formation in Jordan,” in M. Kamrava (ed.), Beyond the Arab Spring: the Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 308. See the special issue of World Affairs journal: Michael J. Totten, “Arab Spring or Islamist Winter,” World Affairs, January/February 2012. Available at http:// www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/arab-spring-or-islamist-winter (accessed January 14, 2017). For a cultural critique of the possibility of democratic transition in the Middle East, see Lee Smith, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (New York: Anchor Books, 2011). Fawaz A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 7. See also, Joel Beinin and Fre´de´ric Vairel, Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).

202

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

22. Chibli Mallat and Edward Mortimer, “The background to civil resistance in the Middle East,” in A. Roberts, M. J. Willis, R. McCarthy, and T. G. Ash (eds), Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 24. 23. Weber, “Designing safe citizens,” p. 126. 24. While numerous examples exist, the 2015 Tunisian anti-terrorism law is illustrative, as it focuses more on solidifying state power at the expense of most forms of dissent, not just terrorism. See Sarah Mersch, “Tunisia’s ineffective counterterrorism law,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 6, 2015. Available at http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa¼60958 (accessed January 14, 2017). 25. Mark Neocleous, “The universal adversary will attack: pigs, pirates, zombies, satan and the class war,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 8/1 (2015), p. 25. 26. Amar, The Security Archipelago, pp. 22 – 7. This is not necessarily a recipe for the end of citizenship. For example, see Chantal Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (New York: Verso, 2013). 27. Weber, “Designing safe citizens,” p. 127. 28. Ibid., p. 130. 29. Ibid. 30. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, rev. edn (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000). 31. J. Achille Mbembe´, On the Postcolony (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001). 32. Juan Cole, “Egypt’s modern revolutions and the fall of Mubarak,” in F. A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 62. 33. Weber, “Designing safe citizens,” p. 126. 34. Ibid. 35. Firoze Manji, “African awakenings: the courage to invent the future,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: the Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Fahamu, 2012), pp. 3 – 4. 36. Firoze Manji, “The depoliticisation of poverty,” in D. Eade (ed.), Development and Rights (Oxford, UK: Oxfam, 1998). See also, Pete W. Moore, Doing Business in the Middle East: Politics and Economic Crisis in Jordan and Kuwait (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Nana Poku and Anna Mdee, Politics in Africa: a New Introduction (London; New York: Zed Books, 2011), p. 9. 37. Manji, “African awakenings,” p. 4. 38. Tom J. Farer, War Clouds on the Horn of Africa: a Crisis for De´tente (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1976), as quoted by Hussein Mohamed Adam, From Tyranny to Anarchy: the Somali Experience (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2008), p. 49. 39. Ali Kadri, Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment (New York: Anthem Press, 2014); “A depressive pre-Arab uprisings economic performance,” in F. A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East:

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

203

Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Cole, “Egypt’s modern revolutions and the fall of Mubarak,” p. 72. Adam Parsons, “Should we celebrate a decline in global poverty?” Sharing.org, March 16, 2012. Available at http://www.stwr.org/poverty-inequality/shouldwe-celebrate-a-decline-in-global-poverty.html (accessed March 18, 2012). On the issue of accumulation by dispossession, see David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 154, 78–9. James L. Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 14. Abu-Rish, “Protests, regime stability, and state formation in Jordan,” p. 290. Mehran Kamrava (ed.), Beyond the Arab Spring: the Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 18. See Morgan, “The soundtrack to the Arab revolutions.” Yasmine Ryan, “Tunisia arrests bloggers and rapper,” Al Jazeera, January 7, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/01/201117183602 34492.html (accessed January 14, 2017). Interestingly, sending rappers to the Middle East was first a policy of the Bush and later the Obama administrations. See Hishaam Aidi, “Leveraging hip hop in US foreign policy,” Al Jazeera, November 7, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/ 10/2011103091018299924.html (accessed January 14, 2017). Raqib, “Case study: the Tunisian uprising and protests,” p. 40. More generally, see Anderson, “Authoritarian legacies and regime change.” Raqib, “Case study: the Tunisian uprising and protests,” p. 41. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 45. Bruce Crumley, “Tunisia pushes out its strongman: could other Arab countries follow?” Time, January 14, 2011. Available at http://www.time.com/time/ world/article/0,8599,2042541,00.html (accessed March 18, 2012). Anderson, “Authoritarian legacies and regime change,” p. 54. Mahmood Mamdani, “An African reflection on Tahrir Square,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: the Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Fahamu, 2012), p. 198. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid. Bruce Crumley, “Why France is staying silent on Tunisia turmoil,” Time, January 12, 2011. Available at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599, 2042005,00.html (accessed March 18, 2012). Ibid. Paul Richter, “Hillary Clinton urges Middle Eastern states to open governments, economies,” LA Times, January 13, 2011. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/ 2011/jan/13/world/la-fg-clinton-qatar-20110114 (accessed January 14, 2017). Howard LaFranchi, “Obama to Hosni Mubarak: Egypt protests must bring reform,” Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 2011. Available at http://www.

204

59.

60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2011/0128/Obama-to-Hosni-MubarakEgypt-protests-must-bring-reform (accessed January 14, 2017). David E. Sanger, “Obama presses Egypt’s military on democracy,” New York Times, February 11, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/ world/middleeast/12diplomacy.html (accessed July 20, 2012). See also, Anthony R. Dimaggio, Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and US Foreign Policy since 9/11 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), Chapter 5. See also DiMaggio’s chapter in this volume. Sanger, “Obama presses Egypt’s military on democracy.” See Yehia Hamed, “US military aid will further strangle Egypt’s democracy,” Al Jazeera, April 6, 2015. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/ 2015/04/military-aid-strangle-egypt-democracy-150406072449677.html (accessed January 14, 2017); Mona Eltahawy, “Egypt’s vanishing youth,” New York Times, June 15, 2015. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/ egypts-vanishing-youth.html?_r¼ 0 (accessed January 14, 2017); David D. Kirkpatrick, “Obama administration criticizes Egypt in report to Congress,” New York Times, June 7, 2015. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/ world/middleeast/obama-administration-criticizes-egypt-in-report-to-congress. html (accessed January 14, 2017). See the US Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Emergency “National Planning Scenario #11.” Available at http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/ planning/playbooks/rdd/Pages/scenario.aspx (accessed January 14, 2017). Neocleous, “The universal adversary will attack,” p. 20. Ibid., p. 26. Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2006); William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Stephen Zunes, Tinderbox: US Foreign Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (London: Zed, 2003). Fawaz A. Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Adam Roberts, Michael J. Willis, Rory McCarthy, and Timothy G. Ash (eds), Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016). See Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Mariner Books, 1999). Manji, “The depoliticisation of poverty,” p. 14. Ibid. For a good review of the debate about political and economic rights, see Daniel J. Whelan, Indivisible Human Rights: a History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). On the question of “bourgeois revolutions,” see Neil Davidson, “Bourgeois revolutions: on the road to salvation for all mankind,” Socialist Review, December 2004. Available at http://socialistreview.org.uk/291/ bourgeois-revolutions-road-salvation-all-mankind (accessed January 14, 2017).

MAKING REVOLUTIONARIES OUT

OF

“SAFE CITIZENS”

205

72. Michaelle Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), p. 159. 73. Ibid. 74. Faleh A. Jabar, Post-Marxism and the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 1997), p. 91, as cited by Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought, p. 159. 75. See http://www.aarcegypt.org/; Browers, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought, especially pp. 180 –9. 76. Manfred B. Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 6 in particular. More recently, see Manfred B. Steger, James Goodman, and Erin K. Wilson, Justice Globalism: Ideology, Crises, Policy (London: SAGE, 2013). 77. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. 78. See Eric Fattor’s chapter in this volume on this question. See also, Amentahru Wahlrab, “Imagining global nonviolence,” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 16/1 – 3 (2017). 79. Michael J. Totten, “Arab Spring or Islamist Winter.”

CHAPTER 9 THE ARAB UPRISINGS AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES:IS THERE AN EMERGING NETWORK OF GLOBAL DISSENT? Eric M. Fattor

Introduction The Arab uprisings that began in 2011 have been among the most historically significant events of the early twenty-first century. In a matter of months, the states of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya saw their decades-old dictatorships collapse, while the states of Yemen and Syria experienced social disruptions and political conflicts that eventually transformed into full-fledged civil wars that persisted as of 2016. Making sense of these uprisings, including answering the questions of how they got started in the first place, why few experts predicted them, and what their consequences have been since the heady days of January 2011 have been topics of intense scholarly and popular inquiry. Of particular interest has been the role of social media and internet technologies in the transpiring of the revolts. While these studies have each in their own way revealed important aspects of this “Arab Spring,” their understandable focus on local and regional dynamics has obscured the larger global socioeconomic and political context in which the

208

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

revolts have occurred – often treating them as being isolated within particular geographical and temporal spaces. In so doing, these studies have ignored or minimized how the revolts influenced or were influenced by exogenous dynamics and linkages. This chapter, therefore, takes a broader view of the Arab uprisings and understands them as a particularly bright point of light in a larger constellation of events that together reveal the key conflicts and antagonisms of twenty-first-century world order. To pursue this line of inquiry, I employ a Gramscian analytical framework to sketch out components of a social, material, and ideational/institutional complex of power. Together, these dynamics represent a fledgling formation of twenty-first-century counterhegemonic dissent. This complex represents traditionally marginalized social groups of the past like students and slum-dwellers, and also includes online communities who are unique to the highly networked twenty-first-century universe. These social groups share an enthusiasm and competence for digital communications and networking technologies and deploy them as the primary means of exercising power and engaging in political action. Their shrewdness in using new media capabilities combined with their rejection of prevailing forms of political organizations result in a willingness to experiment and test new forms of governance and community-building and represent viable alternatives to the precariousness, depravation, and austerity that hegemonic political forces around the world have often violently imposed.

Sketching the Beginnings of a Network of Global Resistance The components of twenty-first-century counterforces and their relationship to each other can be conceptualized using the theoretical frameworks first articulated by Antonio Gramsci and adapted for the analysis of international relations by Robert Cox. This approach provides a holistic account of global politics that identifies important social forces, material capabilities and formations of ideas and institutions, their coordination in the creation and legitimization of a dominant world order, and what tensions and contradictions exist within this formation of power that could lead to its loss of legitimacy or (in the most extreme of cases) structural collapse.1 Since the end of the Cold

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

209

War, dominant banking and manufacturing interests around the world, in coordination with the military and communications complex of the United States and its preponderant influence within the world’s largest international institutions, have actively promoted the advancement of the neoliberal conventional wisdom over the entire globe. The specifics of the neoliberal assemblage of power have been analyzed and described elsewhere and do not need to be summarized at length here.2 What is important to recognize for this chapter is that until 2008, no competing formations of global power effectively challenged the hegemony of Western-sponsored neoliberalism. After the crash of 2008, however, several elements of a larger formation of dissent began to reveal themselves. This nascent structure featured three distinct components: (1) A collection of traditional and novel social groups coalescing around a call to defy the austerity programs of the last few years, to which I have given the labels “futureless” students, “electronic Jacobins,” and the networked “wretched of the earth.”3 (2) The development and use of novel material capabilities that take the form of twenty-first-century media and networking technologies. Of particular interest are the social networking and videosharing platforms of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Vine; the mass proliferation of smartphones with photographic and video capability; and the more recent innovations in the use of livestream technology to ensure actions can be viewed in real time around the world. (3) The sprouting of new ideas, organizational theories, and productive capabilities that have stimulated a debate about how material and knowledge production might change in ways that are radically different from today’s liberalism of capitalist economics and representative democracy. While multitudes of ideas exist, the chapter focuses on three developments: the preference for horizontalism in the structure of social organization; the emergence of decentralized and collaborative models for economic production; and the renewed focus of the idea of the “commons” as a place where societies are free to think, speak, act, and collaborate without external rules imposed by the state or private

210

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

“Futureless” Students “Electronic Jacobins” Networked “Wretched of the Earth”

Social Networks Video Devices Live Stream

Figure 9.1

Horizontalism Collaboration “The commons”

Twenty-First-Century Counter-Hegemonic Bloc

institutions. This complex of power can be conceptualized as shown in Figure 9.1. It is within this milieu that the Arab uprisings took place in 2011. Along with several other notable events since 2008, including the protests and occupations associated with Occupy Wall Street and the numerous student protests against tuition increases in Quebec, California, and Chile, some assortment of the elements represented in the above schema has been present in all of these acts of dissent.4 Close observations of these elements reveal the beginnings of a convergence of common social identity, capability, and ideology that represents the most potent form of global political movement since the tumultuous years of the late 1960s. This is not to suggest that some kind of metaphysical Zeitgeist is consciously shaping all these events along some predetermined yet indecipherable course to an inevitable conclusion. The global nature of the current neoliberal world order compels different social actors and agents resisting this dominant formation of power to employ similar material capabilities and invoke similar ideas and institutions as alternatives. The traits of local resistance retain their uniqueness and diversity, but the omnipresence of neoliberalism means that the methods of resistance and the possible solutions to the problems of neoliberal globalization will share certain commonalities. Exploring what these commonalities are and their presence in the events of the early twenty-first century, with special emphasis on the Arab uprisings, is the focus of this chapter.

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

211

“New” Social and Political Formations “Futureless” Students Students have often been at the forefront of movements challenging the status quo and advocating for social and political change. For this reason, it should not be surprising to see that students once again have played a significant role in the formation of a possible twenty-first-century network of resistance against neoliberalism. Indeed, students were among the most effective catalysts of the Arab uprisings. While the revolts in the Middle East, especially those in Egypt, featured a large cross-section of civil society, students emerged as a focal point of dissent. A core group of activist students opposed to neoliberalism already existed prior to 2011 and served as a mainstay of resistance.5 However, rising food prices, appearances of government corruption, police brutality, and the inability to find work mobilized a larger spectrum of “futureless” students.6 This last factor – the inability to find sufficient employment – is perhaps the most relevant for understanding the intensity of the angst of students and recent graduates around the world. During the social uprisings of the late 1960s, most students were protesting against the demands of conforming to an emerging consumerist lifestyle. Their grievances were primarily cultural in nature and, according to some, reflected a decadent state of middle-class development.7 The youthful rage of the early twenty-first century, however, began with the recognition of the economic precariousness of a globalized economy and the paralyzing trade-off between becoming a competitive job applicant through college education and the lifetime of debt that such an education costs. The first demonstrations against rising tuition fees were, ironically, an expression of students wanting to conform and participate in the consumerist status quo rejected by the 1960s protests. Their discontent stemmed from an inability to partake in the trappings of the consumerist lifestyle despite a desire to conform and work within the system. As the demonstrations increased and spread around the world, however, dismay with the high cost of attaining a professional life gave way to the rejection of an economic arrangement where money students had yet to earn was being claimed years in advance by an alliance of overcharging universities, predatory banks and lending outlets, and government enablers.8

212

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

University students in the Arab world experienced a variation of these dynamics.9 They took their grievances a step further by linking their dire career prospects with the torpor and stasis of decades of corrupt authoritarian rule. Using social networking tools, students at the center of the Arab uprisings built partnerships with other disaffected groups, including slum-dwellers and trade union workers, to swell the ranks of the protestors gathering in Tahrir Square. After the killing of Khaled Said, a youth who had been beaten to death by police for posting evidence of police corruption, a mass demonstration, or “day of rage,” brought out these groups into a volatile mass. At the heart of this activity was the kind of decentralized collaboration that is a hallmark of many political groups of the twenty-first century (and will be discussed further later in the chapter), but it was students, along with their coy use of social media, that were an essential ingredient to the initial successes of the revolt.10 In seeing the importance of social media, these students had much in common with other social groups in other parts of the world.

“Electronic Jacobins” Students clearly form a core plank in a potential formation of global resistance to neoliberalism. Beyond the idyllic confines of the university, however, lies a much more diverse (and perhaps more problematic) set of social networks bound together along different sets of issues. Paul Mason uses the phrase “Jacobin with a laptop” to capture the tech-savvy activist who uses social media and twenty-first-century communication innovations to organize and publicize the arguments of causes like net neutrality and state transparency.11 The greatest cause ce´le`bre of the electronic Jacobin, however, is freedom of information. One of the leading figures in this cause has been the controversial transparency advocate Julian Assange and his infamous WikiLeaks whistleblowing website.12 The original idea behind WikiLeaks, according to Assange, was to correct injustice in the world through the “mass leaking” of sensitive information held in secret by governments and powerful private organizations. “Mass leaking,” as Assange wrote, “leaves them [powerful organizations and governments] exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance [. . .] For man to do anything intelligent, he has to know what’s actually going on.”13 For several years prior to 2010, WikiLeaks had been an overlooked corner of the internet. This changed dramatically upon the release of the

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

213

infamous ”Collateral Murder” video, which depicted the graphic killing by a US Army attack helicopter of several ostensibly unarmed men gathering on a Baghdad street corner. The release of this classified military footage was followed up by the blockbuster release of tens of thousands of American diplomatic cables that caused shockwaves around the world in the late fall and winter of 2010.14 However, while Assange was the public face of WikiLeaks and received much of the attention of the world as the classified information of the military and diplomacy apparatus of the United States was released, the real electronic Jacobin in this episode was Army Private Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning), who downloaded the massive quantities of information from military computers and passed it to Assange for general dissemination.15 Manning was arrested in May 2010 and convicted in 2013 of disclosing classified information to an unauthorized source.16 The WikiLeaks episode brought to light another variation on the electronic Jacobin. Both Manning and Assange (and later Edward Snowden) were folk heroes to a scattered but substantial community of online activists who believed strongly that all information on the internet should be free and unrestricted. The arrest of Manning and the investigation of Assange irritated many of these online activists, but their irritation turned to ire when a number of banks and credit card companies refused to process donations to the bank accounts of Assange or WikiLeaks. Almost immediately, the websites of international financial groups like PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard were defaced or rendered inaccessible through denial of service attacks. It was through this action that much of the world was first introduced to Anonymous – the shadowy and decentralized collective of online crusaders for freedom of information.17 “Operation Payback,” as the campaign to bring down targeted financial websites was dubbed, was an important pivot for Anonymous as a force of resistance against the twenty-first-century assemblage of global power. In subsequent months, Anonymous also associated itself with Occupy Wall Street and engaged in a number of retaliatory moves against perceived police brutality by publishing the private details of police officers, bureaucrats, and politicians who had shown hostility to activists on the street. In terms of the role of electronic Jacobins in the Arab uprisings, Anonymous’ proudest moment came with the fall of the Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. When its “hacktivists”

214

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

crippled the websites of eight key government agencies, including the office of the prime minister and the stock exchange, Anonymous claimed it had played a major role in raising awareness of the protests in Tunisia that eventually led to the full-fledged Arab Spring blossoming a few weeks later.18

Networked “Wretched of the Earth” While much of the commentary and analysis about the role of communication technology in recent social movements has understandably focused on students, activists, and hackers, one must not overlook the way some of this new technology has aroused the action of the world’s most downtrodden groups. The slum-dwellers and urban poor of the twenty-first century often live a meager existence of depravation reminiscent of the early industrial era. But numerous examples exist of their usage of social networking technology, and their participation in events like the Arab uprisings and the London riots makes them an important part of a global network of resistance to neoliberalism. Indeed, it was the humble vegetable vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, whose selfimmolation provided the spark that lit the conflagration that eventually became the Arab Spring. His story and fate, told to the world primarily through Facebook and YouTube, became the rallying cry for tens of thousands of desperately poor and unemployed Tunisians who unleashed their bottled-up anger and rage on the ruling regime and eventually triggered its collapse a few weeks later.19 While Bouazizi’s story represents how an act of desperation can be disseminated globally through social networking capabilities, other examples exist of how those in the lowest rungs of global society use new communications technology to challenge power and change their social environments. In the summer of 2011, the streets of London exploded with violence as large assemblages of rioters and looters fought police, torched buildings, and caused the worst disorder seen in that city in a quarter of a century. Seemingly triggered by the police killing of an unarmed suspect, the ensuing demonstrations against police violence degenerated into opportunities to smash store windows, steal unprotected merchandise, and assault (in some cases kill) unwary bystanders. A key element of the riots was the use of Blackberry Messenger – a cheap and secure way for the urban poor in London to send text messages to each other. As looting began in isolated parts of the city, the locations where

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

215

store windows had been smashed and access to merchandise was available spread to a large network of Blackberry users.20 High-profile social disorder, however, is not the only instance where the “wretched of the earth” are using technology to engage in challenges at the local level. In certain slums in the Philippines, for example, one can find computers hooked to the internet and Facebook pages set up to publicize warnings of possible slum evictions and forced relocations at the order of city or state government and often at the behest of wealthy landlords.21 While these various groups of students, activists, and urban poor are entities unto themselves, one need not look too hard to see places where they converge. As the actions of Anonymous demonstrate, online hackers played a notable part in bringing down the dictatorships of Tunisia and Egypt. Part of what triggered the revolts was the dissemination of the story of Mohammed Bouazizi through Facebook as well as the revelation in a WikiLeaks cable that the government of Ben Ali in Tunisia was corrupt and relied on “police for control and focus(ed) on preserving power.”22 While most Tunisians already knew this, the fact that an ambassador from the United States admitted it contributed to renewed dissent. In another case, one of the iconic images of Anonymous, the Guy Fawkes mask from the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta, has been worn by numerous students at rallies against education cuts or at vigils for Julian Assange. Assange – who, as of 2016, hides from the British state in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations – was the guest of honor at Occupy London on the day of international occupation on October 15, 2012.23 London was also the sight of intense student demonstrations against newly raised tuition fees in late 2010 and the worst riot in that country in a generation in the summer of 2011. It seems that wherever one finds one element of this new formation of global dissent, one is likely to find evidence of the other elements, bound together by their knowledge and utilization of new communications capabilities.

New Capabilities Social Networking Social networking sites have played prominent and widely researched roles in organizing and publicizing the tumultuous events of the

216

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

post-financial meltdown era.24 Paul Mason gives an elegant summary of the division of labor among the various information platforms of the twenty-first century and the impact they can have: If you look at the full suite of information tools [. . .] it goes like this: Facebook is used to form groups, covert and overt – in order to establish those strong and flexible connections. Twitter is used for real-time organization and news dissemination, bypassing the cumbersome “newsgathering” operations of the mainstream media. YouTube and the Twitter-linked photographic sites – Yfrog, Flickr and Twitpic – are used to provide instant evidence of the claims being made. Link-shorteners like bit.ly are used to disseminate key articles via Twitter.25 It is tempting to write off many of these social networking platforms as hives of narcissism and banality – especially as they are used in the advanced industrial West. In this information age, however, the ability to control images and information and organize assemblages of power around these images is increasingly the standard by which influence is measured. In a world where states aggressively retain their monopoly of the legitimate use of violent force, the ability to manipulate information and imagery becomes the primary means nonstate actors in global civil society can exercise any material capability. Moreover, many protest groups and movements around the world have demonstrated a firmer grasp of the potentialities of social media capabilities and a more astute deployment of them in order to realize their goals.26 The function of social networks in giving shape to a counterhegemonic social formation comes primarily in its ability to organically form planetary connections between smaller and more localized networks – in essence the ability to create networks of networks. As Clay Shirky argues, local political movements consist of individual members that form a basic network. Usually these networks tend to be small, which facilitates open communication between the various members. Eventually, the network will grow from a few score to hundreds or perhaps thousands. Such boost in numbers is a positive step in terms of giving the movement more density, but it becomes problematic when one must manage so many connections that the

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

217

gains in mass are negated by the loss of mobility.27 Needless to say, social networks can accelerate this process of immobilizing growth. Thus, the real power of social networks reveals itself when members of different networks begin to form connections. Rather than cultivate a dense but immobile network of several thousand, one focuses on building connections with members of other networks, thus building a network of networks.28 Here is the real value of Facebook, Twitter, and other online network builders: having fifty quality Facebook “friends,” most of whom are members of different political networks in other parts of the world or in other issue areas, becomes exponentially more valuable than accruing thousands of connections within a limited and local space. One can see how this structure facilitates mutual support among different networks around the world with the events of the Arab uprisings. In the aftermath of the death of Mohammed Bouazizi, protests and acts of rebellion in Tunisia spawned shadow protests in other parts of the world as members of different social networks in different countries with a connection to Tunisia organized simultaneous demonstrations. Thus, while youths in Tunis were fighting riot police, flash mobs and demonstrations were taking place in Berlin and London. When Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak shut down the internet in their respective nations, media insurgents in both countries passed along tweets, photos, and blog posts to friends around the world to be disseminated where online access was not blocked.29 Similar mobilizations and networking also allowed for global “anticapitalist” protests on October 15, 2011 to take place with little or no centralized planning or coordination.30 Indeed, an event that takes place in one part of the world will quickly filter to the rest via real-time tweets, Flickr photos, and Snapchat and Instagram photos or videos. The ability to disseminate stirring images around the world instantaneously has proven to be particularly effective in building relationships and coordinating action between disparate groups in different parts of the world.

Video Cameras and Smartphones The visual medium has historically been a unidirectional platform. Content was produced and disseminated by a small group of public or private broadcasters who enjoyed a monopoly-like power over what content was produced and what was permitted to make it on the air.

218

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Those who sought access to national airwaves – even if they could afford the high cost of producing their own content – had to receive permission from an assortment of gatekeepers whose decisions about what did or did not make it to air reflected the prevailing political and socioeconomic conventional wisdom.31 With the emergence in the twenty-first century of mobile devices with cameras and other video recording capabilities, however, broadcasting has become decentralized and multi-directional. The low acquisition costs and simple user interfaces of most digital media equipment provides a way around the gatekeeping infrastructure of traditional broadcast media and the state authorities that oversee them. The presence of ubiquitous recording and communications capability among the masses allows for the generation of what Stephen Mann has dubbed “sousveillance,” or “watchful vigilance from underneath.”32 One of the more compelling examples of this took place during the G20 summit protests in the spring of 2009. During a day of particularly intense scuffling between protestors and police, a local newspaper seller named Ian Tomlinson died after an encounter with riot police. Initial reports suggested he had died of a coincidental heart attack, but the revelation of footage from a tourist’s cell phone camera of Tomlinson being violently struck from behind by a police officer, resulting in him hitting his head on the ground, opened up an investigation on the possibility Tomlinson’s death was not due to natural causes.33 The effects of sousveillance were more mixed during the Arab Spring. Images of the state acting aggressively in the wake of Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia shared through social media instilled a kind of “cognitive liberation” in the minds of the masses.34 Though Ben Ali’s regime persisted, average Tunisians behaved as if he had lost all power, including ignoring or flouting the political institutions through which his power flowed, with particular emphasis on the nation’s security forces.35 A similar phenomenon occurred in Egypt, this time as a result of the aforementioned Khaled Said. The pictures of his disfigured face and body – the result of a brutal beating by local police – were one of the sparks that set off the Arab Spring in Egypt. However, Said’s death was brought about in part by the same video technology that made him a martyr. Said had attracted the attention of the police by posting a video of local corrupt detectives pocketing recently seized drug money. These same detectives used

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

219

the information on the video to track down Said and deliver the bludgeoning that killed him.36 Indeed, much of the protest footage in Egypt, while arousing the anger of the masses, also served as evidence to arrest and prosecute those the authorities considered to be enemies of the state.37

Live Stream For many members and observers of the activist groups that arose after 2008, live streaming became one of the more effective ways to stifle the obstacles erected by states and private media outlets against a freer flow of information and image.38 In Egypt, for example, activists Ramy Raoof and Tarek Shalaby used the European-based platform Bambuser to live stream the events transpiring in Tahrir Square. Through their efforts and those of many others, the world was able to witness the developing tension between protestors and local security forces on the first day of the Egyptian uprising in January of 2011.39 In New York during the occupation of Zuccotti Park, live streamers like Tim Pool not only established a name for themselves with their own unique social networking sites that broadcast live images, but also served as broadcasters for several mainstream media outlets, including Al Jazeera.40 More recently, live streamers in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, have been the de facto frontline reporters whenever social tensions between a disenfranchised community and the local police force have boiled over into violent clashes in the streets.41 Indeed, the volume of popular video streaming of live events has become so ubiquitous that specific websites have established themselves to act as hubs for the various streams emanating from around the world.42 Interestingly enough, traditional international media outlets also found live stream to be a focal point of their reporting operations during the uprising in Egypt. Shortly after the first major protests broke out in Cairo, the satellite channel Al Jazeera established a live stream from the top of a building overlooking Tahrir Square. Al Jazeera’s live stream, with its more distant and panoptic perspective, provided a stark contrast with the gritty and raw images coming from the camera phones of the protestors on the ground.43 This unique perspective inspired traditional live streamers like Tim Pool to come up with new ways of making live streams even more intriguing. Though remotely piloted civilian drones have become commonplace, Pool’s equipping an early model

220

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

remote-controlled aerial vehicle with a live streaming camera to fly above police barricades and other obstacles was seen as quite innovative in 2011.44 These actions, which demonstrate efforts at autonomous and decentralized news gathering, reflect not just a particular media savvy that the social resistance groups of the present era possess in abundance, but also reveal some of the emerging political ideas about more flexible and open forms of democracy and economic production of goods and knowledge that student groups, electronic Jacobins, and networked poor are beginning to adopt.

New Ideas and Institutions Horizontalism The term horizontalidad arose as a powerful concept amid the Argentine bankruptcy crisis in 2002. Finding themselves living in a nonfunctional state and unable to rely on city or government services, collections of people in Buenos Aires and other Argentine cities, usually at the neighborhood level, began to take responsibility for providing basic necessities of life.45 As described by one anonymous individual who participated in the neighborhood assemblies in Buenos Aries during the bankruptcy crisis in 2002: The initial vocabulary was simple: Let’s do things for ourselves, and do them right. Let’s decide for ourselves. Let’s decide democratically, and if we do, let’s explicitly agree that we are all equal here, that there are no bosses, that we don’t want bosses, and that no one can lead us. We lead ourselves. We lead together. We lead and decide amongst ourselves. Someone said, this is horizontal because it isn’t vertical. We don’t want bosses, and because of this it isn’t vertical, but it isn’t part of any theory of horizontalidad or direct democracy.46 Throughout the financial crisis in Argentina, horizontally oriented groups engaged in a multitude of activities to ensure the viability of urban neighborhoods and towns, ranging from planting gardens for food to staging impromptu theater productions.47 Horizontal formations of power also have the advantage of being more in tune with the decentralized nature of social media technologies and

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

221

internet-based affinity groups. Targets that are chosen by Anonymous are not given from a central command source but are debated in chat rooms until something approaching a consensus is realized. Only after this consensus has been reached does action take place.48 The same phenomenon works through Twitter. Millions of inputs of information are entered into the larger “twitterverse” at any given time, creating the potential for inaccurate accountings and mass confusion. This problem is overcome not by the creation of a transcendent authority to determine what is or is not “true,” but through a more imminent process of self-filtering through “retweeting” on Twitter or “liking” on Facebook. This process, according to Paul Mason, allows for “the democracy of retweeting [or sharing on Facebook] [to take] out the trash.”49 Inserting false information or propaganda into the information stream can still take place, but the ability of that information to sustain itself for an extended period of time becomes difficult. For these and other reasons, one can perhaps see why theorists like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri believe “network instruments do not create the movements [. . .] but they are convenient tools, because they correspond in some sense to the horizontal network structure and democratic experiments of the movements themselves.”50 These insights were very much in the mind of many of the organizers and participants of the uprisings in Egypt. Defining the term “rhizome,” a concept related to the idea of horizontalism, Aly El-Raggal, an organizer in the city of Alexandria, argued, A rhizome refers to roots like ginger, potatoes and bamboo. They link together underground through strong roots that intertwine and spread horizontally, not vertically [. . . .] The former regime was defeated because it only knew how to break down the tree structure, which is vertical. It just cut down the tree, or cut off the head of the leader. But a rhizomatic structure cannot be broken down. If you rupture one area, it just picks up in another area.51 This rhizomatic structure in Egypt proved to be more vulnerable than suggested by El-Raggal’s comments given the return to authoritarianism in Egypt in 2013. Yet the widespread reference to and utilization of the concept in varied locations around the world and in cyberspace suggest its appeal remains strong.

222

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Collaborative Production The tendency toward non-hierarchic forms of interaction and organization is not relegated to the political realm. Since World War II, the traditional factory schema of industrial production has begun to lose some of its applicability due in large part to the propensity for modern states in the West to transform their economies from an industrial orientation to a post-Fordist or knowledge-based orientation. Priority shifted away from the production of material goods built by machinists, construction workers, miners, and farmers to the production of specialized knowledge and techniques by engineers, chemists, lawyers, and bankers. On top of this was the increase in the production of services and affinities, including entertainment and leisure industries, child care services, health care, and education.52 Finally, the globalization of production meant that the leverage industrial workers once enjoyed in the developed world had been neutralized by the ability to move production centers to other nations where the cost of labor was substantially less. The net effect of this transformation was the end of the usefulness of the bourgeois/proletarian interpretive model that was at the heart of the old Marxist/Leninist orthodoxy.53 While destroying the centralized industrialism of the past (or relocating to parts of the developing world) and replacing it with postFordist methods of de-territorialized collaboration and coordination, spaces were unwittingly opened up for experimenting with techniques of production where traditional considerations for profit-making were minimized. The workers of the present era, especially knowledge workers associated with professional vocations and research and development, do not often physically work together in a factory or an office space as in the past, but through the use of networking and collaboration platforms, and perform their respective functions from locations around the world. One industry in particular – computer software – has been on the vanguard of this method of production, especially among the free and open source software movement. As documented by Gabriella Coleman, a robust community of software “hackers” have coalesced around the Debian operating system, setting a completely autonomous and independent network of volunteer programmers and designers who troubleshoot the existing system while designing new programs and applications that build upon what is already in use.54 In a world where companies like Microsoft and Google

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

223

exercise near-monopoly powers on mass-produced software, the Debian movement offers a plausible alternative to the production of a key product in the twenty-first century. In this same spirit, Diana Bossio, in studying the production of journalistic products during the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, has argued that digital media enabled reporters and activists to work together to make reports, write stories, and get relevant news out to international audiences amid the information blackouts imposed by the ruling regimes.55 Admittedly, these forms of production are more plausible in the world of knowledge production – it would be hard to see how such techniques would operate in a coal mine or cattle ranch. Nevertheless, as the globalized world derives larger sums of value from knowledge-based endeavors, it is not beyond the pale to imagine how such forms of production become the dominant phase in a larger process of productive activity.

The “Commons” One of the most powerful images emerging from the Arab uprisings was that of tens of thousands of protestors so completely packed together in Tahrir Square in Cairo that their ranks overflowed into the streets and alleyways of surrounding neighborhoods. The potency of these images came not only from their depiction of such large masses of humanity gathered together in a single space, but also in giving visual relief to the idea that communities rely upon common areas accessible to all in order to engage in any sort of substantive political activity. The importance of free space for unmediated and open interaction has become an increasing concern in many sites of political resistance in the wake of the Arab uprisings. In a process that David Harvey has labeled “accumulation through dispossession,” common areas for a community to gather and engage in any number of collaborative activities become increasingly scarce as the state and corporate entities seize them for economic exploitation.56 Indeed, the event that unleashed the Istanbul riots of 2013 was the scheduled bulldozing of one of that cramped city’s last public green spaces, Gezi Park, into a shopping center.57 The gatherings at Tahrir Square, in contrast, showed, according to Adam Ramadan, how “the camp was a space for freedom, resistance and liberation, beyond the control of the state and outside the normal political order, in which a more progressive politics was forged and made real,” if only for a limited time.58

224

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Public space is only one of a number of basic social assets and functions that could be held in common and freed from the problems and restrictions of proprietary ownership. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have identified several key assets, including water, banking, and education, where viable alternative governing structures exist in contrast to the traditional private corporate or state monopoly models. In all three examples, the focus of cultivation, maintenance, and distribution of these assets is on local autonomous control and management by those who use and rely upon them rather than through detached hierarchical mechanisms seeking exploitation for profit or political leverage.59 Fully constituted institutions of administration have yet to develop, but the free and open spaces that opened up during recent social upheavals become important sites of experimentation and innovation in the effort to develop alternative systems of governance. Their chances for success are very briefly discussed in the concluding section.

Conclusion The Arab uprisings of 2011 were one set among many simultaneous yet uncoordinated acts of defiance against the economic and political status quo. These sights of dictatorships collapsing and financial elites being challenged on the street and in the halls of power represented a disruption to the “conventional wisdom” of neoliberalism dominant in the twenty-first century. However, in writing this chapter, I wanted to look beyond the local scale of these movements to see if something more substantive and transformative was happening from a global perspective. Broad observation revealed the existence of three essential ingredients to any plausible alternative formation – new social groups and classes, new forms of capability and projection of power, and new ideas and philosophies slowly solidifying into concrete institutions that overcome the shortcomings and contradictions of the present era. In the first case, new social groups like electronic Jacobins represent a new type of social formation that take root in cyberspace rather than in the material world. These online activists join traditional subordinate groups like students and marginalized populations like slum-dwellers and the urban poor to form key nodal points in an ever-growing network of opposition. In all these examples, the ability to deploy the advanced media technologies of the twenty-first century provides a power and

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

225

capability previous generations of challengers lacked. Social networks, mobile devices, and live streaming have all gotten much of the attention given their ability to facilitate the organization of action, globalize the publication of relevant data and material, and accomplish these objectives in a decentralized and nonhierarchical sort of way. This trend away from centralized leadership and command allows for new ideas about social and political community that reject the assumptions of representative democracy and open up a space to imagine more direct forms of democratic governance. Among the most prominent have been the popularity of horizontal organizing, the post-industrial power of collaborative production, and a new focus on the autonomous management of common assets. As this chapter argues, some combination of these elements has been present in almost all of the major protests and revolts since 2008, indicating that a global constellation of counter-hegemonic power exists. For how long this formation persists and whether it grows into something more coherent is difficult to determine. Already there are appearances that the changes this assemblage of power is able to effect have already been reached – nowhere more so than in Egypt, where the aftermath of the revolt there saw one dictator and one president deposed before a new repressive formation of authoritarian power (with the tacit endorsement of the United States) reestablished rule.60 Nevertheless, the existence of simultaneous actions in multiple parts of the world challenging the global status quo without leaders or centralized coordination is an intriguing achievement. Together they represent the most boisterous and effective challenge to status quo formations of power since the late 1960s. Only time will reveal the consequences of this turbulence.61

Notes 1. Robert Cox, “Social forces, states, and world orders: beyond international relations theory,” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 10 (1981), p. 126. 2. For book-length overviews, see Robert Cox, The Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals and Civilization (New York: Routledge, 2002), and David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005). 3. The first two of these labels were adapted from the journalist Paul Mason. See Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions (New York: Verso, 2012), pp. 66 – 79.

226

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

4. In the case of Egypt, see John Chalcraft, “Egypt’s uprising, Mohammed Bouazizi, and the failure of neoliberalism,” The Maghreb Review 37/3– 4 (2012), pp. 195 – 214; in the case of Occupy Wall Street, see Jan Rehmann, “Occupy Wall Street and the question of hegemony: a Gramascian analysis,” Socialism and Democracy 27/1 (2013), pp. 1 – 18; and on the student strikes, see Henry A. Giroux, “The Quebec student protest movement in the age of neoliberal terror,” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 19/5 (2013), pp. 515 – 35. 5. The peak of pre-2011 dissent took place in the city of Mahalla al-Kobra, where thousands of students, unionized workers, and other dissidents launched a general strike that lasted three days. The strike ended with a harsh government crackdown that killed at least two people and injured hundreds more. See Michael Slackman, “In Egypt, technology helps spread discontent of workers,” New York Times, April 7, 2008. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/04/07/world/middleeast/07egypt.html (accessed September 15, 2015). 6. Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, pp. 11 – 24. 7. See Norman Podhoretz, “The adversary culture and the new class,” in S. E. Bronner (ed.), Twentieth Century Political Theory: a Reader (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 106 – 14. 8. The most succinct expression of student malcontent is found in the online manifesto “Communique´ from an absent future,” We Want Everything, September 24, 2009. Available at http://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/ 2009/09/24/communique-from-an-absent-future (accessed February 27, 2012). 9. See Filipe R. Campante and Davin Chor, “Why was the Arab world poised for revolution? Schooling, economic opportunities, and the Arab Spring,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 26/2 (2012), pp. 167 – 88. 10. John Chalcraft, “Horizontalism in the Egyptian revolutionary process,” Middle East Report 42 (Spring 2012). 11. Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, p. 74. 12. Suffice to say, much of the discussion here about anti-secrecy activists like Julian Assange and Private Manning is also applicable to Edward Snowden. 13. Julian Assange quoted in David Leigh and Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), pp. 46 – 7. 14. These cables were simultaneously published in three newspapers: New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel. They were actually the third installment of published leaks that began with military logs from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. See Leigh and Harding, WikiLeaks, pp. 116– 34. 15. Ibid., pp. 20 – 31. 16. The incarceration of Manning became a controversy unto itself, with allegations that Manning’s treatment in prison amounted to a form of torture, and brought the condemnation of the United Nations. See Ewen MacAskill, “Bradley Manning case sparks UN criticism of US government,” Guardian, April 11, 2011. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/bradley-

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

227

manning-juan-mendez-torture (accessed November 18, 2016). In August of 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in military prison. After the passing of this sentence, Manning announced a desire to live as a woman and be called by the name Chelsea Manning. See Adam Gabbatt, “‘I am Chelsea Manning,’ says jailed soldier formerly known as Bradley,” Guardian, August 22, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/bradley-manningwoman-chelsea-gender-reassignment (accessed September 1, 2013). Leigh and Harding, WikiLeaks, pp. 206– 7. Yasmine Ryan, “Tunisia’s bitter cyberwar,” Al Jazeera, January 6, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/01/20111614145839362. html (accessed March 2, 2012). See Rania Abouzeid, “Bouazizi: the man who set himself and Tunisia on fire,” Time, January 21, 2011. Available at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,2044723,00.htm (accessed March 5, 2012). For further details on the role of Blackberry Messenger in the riots, see James Ball and Symeon Brown, “Why Blackberry messenger was rioters’ communication method of choice,” Guardian, December 7, 2011. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/07/bbm-rioters-communicationmethod-choice?INTCMP¼SRCH (accessed March 2, 2012). Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, pp. 206– 9. Ambassador Robert Godec quoted in Leigh and Harding, WikiLeaks, p. 226. Adam Gabbatt, Mark Townsend, and Lisa O’Carroll, “‘Occupy’ anti-capitalism protests spread around the world,” Guardian, October 15, 2011. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/16/occupy-protests-europelondon-assange (accessed March 2, 2012). A good primer on the literature and debates of digital media and society in the twenty-first century is Christian Fuchs, Social Media: a Critical Introduction (London: Sage, 2014). Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, p. 75. See Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, “The role of digital media,” Journal of Democracy 22/3 (2011), p. 35. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing Without Organizations (New York: Penguin, 2008), p. 215. Ibid., pp. 216 – 17. Ahmed Shihab-Eldin and Ben Connors, “The network revolution,” Al Jazeera, February 21, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/empire/ 2011/02/201121614532116986.html (accessed March 19, 2012). Gabbatt, Townsend, and O’Carroll, “Occupy.” The classic rendition of this argument comes from Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 2002). Stephen Mann, “Sousveillance: inverse surveillance in multimedia imaging,” in Proceedings of the 12th Annual ACM Conference on Multimedia (New York, 2004), pp. 620– 7.

228

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

33. Paul Lewis, “Video reveals G20 police assault on man who died,” Guardian, April 7, 2009. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/videog20-police-assault (accessed March 5, 2012). 34. For more on “cognitive liberation,” see Doug McAdam, Political Process and Development of Black Insurgency, 1930 – 1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). 35. Howard and Hussain, “The role of digital media,” pp. 36 –8. 36. Ernesto Londono, “Egyptian man’s death became symbol of callous state,” Washington Post, February 9, 2011. Available at http://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/08/AR2011020806360.html (accessed May 31, 2012). 37. This tactic predates the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. See Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: the Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2011) for examples from Russia and Belarus. 38. For examples, see Kari Ande´n-Papadopoulos, “Citizen camera-witnessing: embodied political dissent in the age of ‘mediated mass self-communication’,” New Media and Society 16/5 (August 2014), pp. 753 –69. 39. Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, p. 13. 40. See “Occupy Wall Street’s live streamer Tim Pool,” Time, n.d. Available at http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1279751069001_ 2099632,00.html (accessed March 20, 2012). 41. Adrian Chen, “Is livestreaming the future of media or the future of activism?” New York Magazine, December 7, 2014. Available at http://nymag.com/daily/ intelligencer/2014/12/livestreaming-the-future-of-media-or-activism.html (accessed July 1, 2015). 42. For one example, see http://globalrevolution.tv. 43. Nancy Messieh, “Live-streaming service Bambuser goes from Egypt’s revolution to its elections,” The Next Web, November 29, 2011. Available at http:// thenextweb.com/me/2011/11/29/live-streaming-service-bambuser-goes-fromegypts-revolution-to-its-elections (accessed August 19, 2015). 44. Noel Sharkey and Sarah Knuckey, “Occupy Wall Street’s ‘occucopter’ – who’s watching whom?” Guardian, December 21, 2011. Available at http://www. guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/21/occupy-wall-streetoccucopter-tim-pool (accessed March 20, 2012). 45. For a complete explication of the concept of horizontalidad, see Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), pp. 37 – 67. 46. “Pablo” quoted in Sitrin, Horizontalism, p. 41. 47. Ibid., p. 42. 48. See Molly Sauter, The Coming Swarm: DDOS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 49. Mason, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, p. 75. 50. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “The fight for ‘real democracy’ at the heart of Occupy Wall Street,” Foreign Affairs, October 11, 2011. Available at https://

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY GLOBAL CRISES

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

229

www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-america/2011-10-11/fight-realdemocracy-heart-occupy-wall-street (accessed August 15, 2015). Linda Herrera, “Generation rev and the struggle for democracy: interview with Aly El-Raggal,” Jadaliyya, October 14, 2011. Available at http://www. jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2869/generation-rev-and-the-struggle-fordemocracy_inte (accessed September 1, 2015). See Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). See Hardt and Negri’s discussion of the obsolescence of the term “working class” in Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. xiv – xv. See Gabriella Coleman, Coding Freedom: the Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). Diana Bossio, “Journalism during the Arab Spring: interactions and challenges” in Saba Bebawi and Diana Bossio (eds), Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: the “Arab Spring” (New York: Palgrave, 2014), pp. 26 –32. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 137– 82. Richard Seymour, “Istanbul park protests sow the seeds of a Turkish spring,” Guardian, May 31, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/comment isfree/2013/may/31/istanbul-park-protests-turkish-spring (accessed July 2, 2015). Adam Ramadan, “From Tahrir to the world: the camp as a political public space,” European Urban and Regional Studies 20/1 (2013), p. 145. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Declaration (New York: Argo-Navis, 2012), pp. 69 – 83. See “Egypt: year of abuses under al-Sisi,” Human Rights Watch, June 8, 2015. Available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/08/egypt-year-abuses-underal-sisi (accessed August 19, 2015). The author would like to thank Amentahru Wahlrab, Michael McNeil, Matthew Weinert, Nick Jackson, and Lisa Burke for their comments in the drafting of this chapter. Any errors and mistakes are entirely my own.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abazeid, Ahmad, “Siyasat al-Din al-Mukhabba’: Kaifa fashala al-Islamiyyun fi Harb al-Afkar?” [“The politics of hidden religion: how did Islamists fail in the war of ideas?”], Nama Center for Research and Studies, March 13, 2015. Available at http://nama-center.com/ActivitieDatials.aspx?id¼30525 (accessed February 26, 2017). ‘Abbas, Mu‘taz, “al-fidiyu . . . ‘Amr Adib: yuhajam Kamal Abu al-Majd bi subbub tasrihatihu did al-sisi” (“Video of Amr Adeed attacking Kamal Abu al-Magd because of his statement against Sisi”), Tahrir, July 8, 2015. Available at http:// www.tahrirnews.com/posts/251662 (accessed December 15, 2016). Abounaddara, “Al-Soorah did al-Soori” [“The image vs. the Syrian”], Al-Hayat, December 5, 2013. Available at http://daharchives.alhayat.com/issue_archive/ Hayat%20INT/2013/5/12/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%88%D8% B1%D8%A9-%D8%B6%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9% 88%D8%B1%D9%8A.html (accessed September 11, 2016). ——— “The mysterious disappearance of Khaldoun,” October 17, 2014. Available at https://vimeo.com/109216364 (accessed October 30, 2014). Abouzeid, Rania, “Bouazizi: the man who set himself and Tunisia on fire,” Time, January 21, 2011. Available at http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/ 0,9171,2044723,00.html (accessed October 21, 2016). Abu Bakr, ‘Aziza, “al-Hadidi zawj bint khayrat al-shatir: kathir min qiyadat al-jama‘a la yutbiqun biy‘a al-imam hassan al-banna!” [“Hadidi, husband of the daughter of Khayrat al-Shatir: Many of the group’s leaders do not follow Imam Hassan al-Banna!”], Shabab, August 10, 2012. Available at http://shabab.ahram. org.eg/News/4724.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). Abu Khalil, Haytham, Ikhwan islahiyyun [Reformist Brothers] (Cairo: Dar Dawwin, 2012). Abu-Lughod, Lila, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Abu-Rish, Ziad, “Protests, regime stability, and state formation in Jordan,” in M. Kamrava (ed.), Beyond the Arab Spring: the Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 277 – 312.

232

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Adam, Hussein Mohamed, From Tyranny to Anarchy: the Somali Experience (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2008). Adams, Simon, “Libya and the responsibility to protect: results and prospects,” Global Policy Journal, March 28, 2014. Available at http://www.globalpolicy journal.com/blog/28/03/2014/libya-and-responsibility-protect-results-andprospects (accessed February 26, 2017). Adesnik, David and Michael McFaul, “Engaging autocratic allies to promote democracy,” Washington Quarterly 29/2 (2006), pp. 7 –26. Ahram Online, “Khaled Said’s killers sentenced to ten years in jail,” Ahram Online, March 3, 2014. Available at: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/ 95747/Egypt/Politics-/Khaled-Saids-killers-sentenced-to-ten-years-in-jai.aspx (accessed August 18, 2016). Aidi, Hishaam, “Leveraging hip hop in US foreign policy,” Al Jazeera, November 7, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/10/ 2011103091018299924.html (accessed January 14, 2017). ——— “Reviving Thomas Sankara’s spirit.” Al Jazeera, June 4, 2015. Available at http://allafrica.com/stories/201506041434.html (accessed August 18, 2016). Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012). Aliriza, Fadil, “Why counterterrorism could be the death of Tunisian democracy,” Foreign Policy, December 30, 2015. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/ 12/30/why-counterterrorism-could-be-the-death-of-tunisian-democracy/ (accessed February 26, 2017). Aliyyat [The Virtual Public Sphere of the Syrian Revolution: Characteristics-TrendsMechanisms of Shaping Public Opinion] (Beirut: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2012). Allen, John, Lost Geographies of Power (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003). Althusser, Louis, Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971). ——— On Ideology (New York: Verso, 2008). Amar, Paul, “Global South to the rescue: emerging humanitarian superpowers and globalizing rescue industries,” Globalizations 9/1 (2012), pp. 1 –13. ——— The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). Amin, Samir, The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles (London: Zed Press, 1978). Anderson, Lisa, “Demystifying the Arab Spring: parsing the differences between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya,” Foreign Affairs 90/3 (2011), pp. 2 –7. ——— “Authoritarian legacies and regime change: towards understanding political transition in the Arab world,” in F. A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 41 – 59. Apter, Andrew H., The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Inc., 1976). Ariely, Dan, Predictably Irrational: the Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

233

Ayubi, Nazih, Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I.B.Tauris, 1995). Bacevich, Andrew J., The Limits of Power: the End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008). Bajoria, Jayshree, “Libya and the responsibility to protect,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 24, 2011. Available at http://www.cfr.org/libya/libya-responsi bility-protect/p24480 (accessed February 26, 2017). Baker, Raymond William, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). ——— One Islam, Many Muslim Worlds: Spirituality, Identity, and Resistance across Islamic Lands (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Baksh, Rawwida and Wendy Harcourt (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Ball, James and Symeon Brown, “Why Blackberry messenger was rioters’ communication method of choice,” Guardian, December 7, 2011. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/07/bbm-rioters-communicationmethod-choice?INTCMP¼SRCH (accessed March 2, 2012). Ball, Terence and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 7th edn (New York: Pearson, 2009). Barclay, Roddy, “In Burkina Faso, A new twist On West African coups.” Forbes, October 31, 2014. Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/riskmap/2014/10/ 31/in-burkina-faso-a-new-twist-on-west-african-coups/ (accessed June 28, 2015). Barnett, Michael, “Sovereignty, nationalism, and the regional order in the Arab states system,” in T. J. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds), State Sovereignty as a Social Construct (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). ———, Eyewitness to a Genocide: the United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). Baxter, Kylie and Shahram Akbarzadeh, U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: the Roots of Anti-Americanism (London: Routledge, 2008). Bayoumy, Yara, “Analysis: Arab Spring nations backtrack on women’s rights,” Thomas Reuters Foundation, November 12, 2013. Available at http://www.trust. org/item/20131111110907-oyqeb/?source¼spotlight-writaw (accessed June 5, 2015). BBC News, “Belgian Apology to Rwanda,” BBC News, April 7, 2000. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/705402.stm (accessed September 7, 2016). ———, “Mona Eltahawy: women will finish what Arab Spring started,” BBC, April 24, 2012. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-17820809 (accessed June 3, 2015). Beinin, Joel, “Workers’ protest in Egypt: neo-liberalism and class struggle in 21st century,” Social Movement Studies 8/4 (2009), pp. 449– 54. ——— “Workers struggles under ‘socialism’ and neoliberalism,” in R. El-Mahdi and P. Marfleet (eds), Egypt: the Moment of Change (London; New York: Zed Books, 2009), pp. 68– 86. ——— The Rise of Egypt’s Workers (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2012). Beinin, Joel and Fre´de´ric Vairel, Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).

234

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

——— “Afterword: popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt,” in J. Beinin and F. Vairel (eds), Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 237– 51. Bell, Daniel, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973). ———, The End of Ideology: on the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Benkler, Yochai, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). Bennett, W. Lance, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). Bishri, Tariq, Min awraq thawrat 25 Yanayir, 2011 (From the Papers of January 25, 2011) (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2012). ——— Ummati fi al-‘alam [My Nation in the World] (Cairo: Dar al-Bashir, 2014). ——— al-Tajaddud al-hadari: dirasat fil tadakhul al-mafahim al-mu‘asira ma‘ al-marja‘iyyat al-mawrutha [Civilizational Renewal: a Study of the Introduction of Modern Concepts with Inherited Sources] (Cairo: Arab Network for Research and Publishing, 2015). Bleiker, Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Blight, Garry, Sheila Pulham, and Paul Torpey, “Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests,” Guardian, January 5, 2012. Available at http://www. theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interacti ve-timeline (accessed October 21, 2016). Bloomberg News, “IMF loan could be back on the table for Egypt,” Bloomberg News, May 28, 2015. Available at http://www.thenational.ae/business/ economy/imf-loan-could-be-back-on-the-table-for-egypt (accessed August 18, 2016). Boesveld, Sarah, “Jean acknowledges Canada’s inaction during Rwandan genocide,” The Globe and Mail, April 21, 2010. Bohan, Caren, “US and UN condemn attacks on protesters in Syria,” Reuters, March 18, 2011. Available at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-protest-usaidUSTRE72H8BR20110318 (accessed October 28, 2015.) Bond, Patrick, “Neoliberal threats to North Africa,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: the Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Pambazuka Press, 2011), pp. 252 – 72. Bonn, Scott A., Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the US War on Iraq (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010). Branch, Adam, Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Branch, Jordan, The Cartographic State: Maps, Territory, and the Origins of Sovereignty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Brodeur, Nicole, “How Mona Eltahawy became a ‘full-fledged feminist,’” Seattle Times, May 15, 2015. Available at http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/ books/how-mona-eltahawy-became-a-full-fledged-feminist/ (accessed July 4, 2015).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

235

Browers, Michaelle, Democracy and Civil Society in Arab Political Thought: Transcultural Possibilities, 1st edn (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006). ——— Political Ideology in the Arab World: Accommodation and Transformation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Brown, Wendy, “Civilizational delusions: secularism, tolerance, equality,” Theory and Event 15/2 (2012). Available at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/478356 (accessed June 15, 2015). Brownlee, Jason, “Unrequited moderation: credible commitments and state repression in Egypt,” Studies in Comparative International Development 45/4 (2010), pp. 468– 89. Brownlee, Jason, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds, The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Burleigh, Nina, “Gang rape, the dark side of Egypt’s protests,” CNN.com, July 3, 2013. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/03/opinion/burleigh-rapestahrir-square (accessed June 5, 2015). Butler, Judith, “Sexual politics, torture, and secular time,” British Journal of Sociology 59/1 (2008), pp. 1 – 23. Callamard, Agne`s, “French policy in Rwanda,” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 157– 83. Campante, Felipe R. and Davin Chor, “Why was the Arab world poised for revolution? Schooling, economic opportunities, and the Arab Spring,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 26/2 (2012), pp. 167– 88. Campbell, David, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, rev. edn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Carmon, Irin, “The woman who’s explaining Egypt to the world,” Jezebel.com, January 31, 2011. Available at http://jezebel.com/5747762/the-woman-whosexplaining-egypt-to-the-west (accessed June 24, 2015). Cassels, Alan, Ideology and International Relations in the Modern World (New York: Routledge, 1996). CBC News, “US admits funding Syrian opposition,” CBCnews.com, April 18, 2011. Available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-admits-funding-syrian-opposition1.987112 (accessed January 13, 2017). ———, “Obama: notion that Syrian opposition could have overthrown Assad with US arms a ‘fantasy,’” CBS News, June 20, 2014. Available at www.cbsnews.com/ news/obama-notion-that-syrian-opposition-could-overthrow-assad-a-fantasy/ (accessed October 8, 2015). Chalcraft, John, “Egypt’s uprising, Mohammed Bouazizi, and the failure of neoliberalism,” The Maghreb Review 37/3 – 4 (2012), pp. 195– 214. ———“Horizontalism in the Egyptian revolutionary process,” Middle East Report 42 (Spring 2012). Chen, Adrian, “Is livestreaming the future of media or the future of activism?” New York Magazine, December 7, 2014. Available at http://nymag.com/daily/ intelligencer/2014/12/livestreaming-the-future-of-media-or-activism.html (accessed July 1, 2015). Chivvis, Christopher S., Toppling Qaddafi: Libya and the Limits of Liberal Intervention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Chossudovsky, Michel, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, 2nd edn (Quebec: Global Research, 2003).

236

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Chouli, Lila, “Peoples’ revolts in Burkina Faso,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Pambazuka Press, 2011), pp. 131 – 46. Clinton, Bill, “Remarks to the people of Rwanda,” Miller Center, March 25, 1998. Available at http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-4602 (accessed September 7, 2016). ——— My Life (New York: Knopf, 2004). CNN Wire Staff, “Obama says Egypt’s transition ‘must begin now,’” CNN.com, February 2, 2011. Available at http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/01/us. egypt.obama/ (accessed January 13, 2017). Cochran, Molly, Normative Theory in International Relations: a Pragmatic Approach (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Cohen, Jeffrey E., The Presidency in the Era of 24-Hour News (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). ——— Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Cole, Juan, “Egypt’s modern revolutions and the fall of Mubarak,” in F.A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 60– 79. Coleman, Gabriela, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). ——— Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Face of Anonymous (London: Verso, 2014). Collins, Barrie, “New wars and old wars? The lessons of Rwanda,” in D. Chandler (ed.), Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 157 – 75. “Communique´ from an absent future,” We Want Everything, September 24, 2009. Available at http://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/communi que-from-an-absent-future (accessed February 27, 2012). Converse, Philip E., “The nature of belief systems in mass publics,” Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 18 (1964/1 – 3), pp. 1 – 74. Cooper, Helene, and Steven Lee Myers, “Obama takes hard line with Libya after shift by Clinton,” New York Times, March 18, 2011. Available at http://www. nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html (accessed December 6, 2016). Cox, Robert, “Social forces, states, and world orders: beyond international relations theory,” Millennium—Journal of International Studies 10 (1981), pp. 126 –55. ——— The Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals and Civilization (New York: Routledge, 2002). Crumley, Bruce, “Why France is staying silent on Tunisia turmoil,” Time, January 12, 2011. Available at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2042005, 00.html (accessed March 18, 2012). ——— “Tunisia pushes out its strongman: could other Arab countries follow?” Time, January 14, 2011. Available at http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ 0,8599,2042541,00.html (accessed March 18, 2012). Cunningham, Robert and Yasin Sarayrah, Wasta: The Hidden Force in Middle Eastern Society (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993). Dabashi, Hamid, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (London: Zed Books, 2012).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

237

Daley, Janet, “Libya and the Arabs deserve democracy – and our help,” Telegraph, February 26, 2011. Available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colum nists/janetdaley/8349644/Libya-and-the-Arabs-deserve-democracy-and-ourhelp.html (accessed June 25, 2015). Davidson, Neil, “Bourgeois revolutions: on the road to salvation for all mankind,” Socialist Review, December 2004. Available at http://socialistreview.org.uk/291/ bourgeois-revolutions-road-salvation-all-mankind (accessed January 14, 2017). Diamond, Larry Jay, “Can the whole world become democratic? Democracy, development and international policies,” Center for the Study of Democracy, 2003. Available at http://homepage.univie.ac.at/vedran.dzihic/diamond_2004.pdf (accessed February 22, 2017). Diamond, Larry Jay, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries, vols 1 – 4 (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1988). Diehl, Jackson, “Fulfilling the Arab Spring,” Washington Post, April 26, 2015. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/investing-in-the-legacyof-the-arab-spring/2015/04/26/c44b1638-e9c7-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_ story.html (accessed July 14, 2015). DiMaggio, Anthony R., When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010). ——— Selling War, Selling Hope: Presidential Rhetoric, the News Media, and US Foreign Policy Since 9/11 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015). Dreyfuss, Robert, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2005). Druckman, James N. and Lawrence R. Jacobs, Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Dunia, Khawla M, “Hal al-Majlis al-Intiqali Huwa al-Hal . . . Wa Ma Hiya alMaham al Aniyya lil Thawrah al-Sooriyya Kai Tantasir?” [“Is the transitional council the solution . . . and what are the current tasks for the Syrian revolution to succeed?”] Al-Quds al-Arabi, 2011. Available at www.alqudsalarabi.info/i ndex.asp?fname¼data\2011\ 2011\09\09-07\07qpt980.htm (accessed October 10, 2015). Eagleton, Terry, Ideology: An Introduction (New York: Verso, 1991). “Egypt: year of abuses under al-Sisi,” Human Rights Watch, June 8, 2015. Available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/08/egypt-year-abuses-under-al-sisi (accessed August 19, 2015). Ehab, John, “Journalists protest state media coverage of Alexandria police killing,” Egypt Independent, June 30, 2010. Available at http://www.egyptindependent. com/news/journalists-protest-state-media-coverage-alexandria-police-killing (accessed August 17, 2016). Eltahawy, Mona, “Why do they hate us?” Foreign Policy, April 23, 2012. Available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/why_do_they_hate_us (accessed June 3, 2015). ——— “Egypt’s vanishing youth,” New York Times, June 15, 2015. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/egypts-vanishing-youth.html? _r¼0 (accessed January 14, 2017). Engels, Jeremy, Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010). Entman, Robert M., “Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43/4 (1993), pp. 51 – 8.

238

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Epstein, Kayla, “Ferguson police created a ‘highly toxic environment,’ DoJ report reveals,” Guardian, March 4, 2015. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/us -news/2015/mar/04/ferguson-police-highly-toxic-environment-doj-report (accessed August 15, 2015). Erhaim, Zaina, “Sayyidat Douma—Reef Dimashq: Nasawiyyat bil Fitrah wa Thawriyyat bil Tandhim” [“Douma’s ladies—Damascus countryside: feminists by instinct and revolutionaries by organization”], Al-Hayat, November 19, 2011. Available at. http://www.alhayat.com/Details/318296 (accessed September 9, 2016). Errazzouki, Samia, “Dear Mona Eltahawy, you do not represent ‘us,’” Al-Monitor.com, April 24, 2012. Available at http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/ al-monitor/dear-mona-eltahawy-you-do-not-re.html# (accessed January 3, 2015). Eshbaugh-Soha, Matthew and Jeffrey S. Peake, Breaking through the Noise: Presidential Leadership, Public Opinion, and the News Media (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). Ezzat, Dina, “We are not in civil war, but catastrophe has many forms,” Ahram Online, August 21, 2013. Available at http://english.ahram.org.eg/News Content/1/64/79603/Egypt/Politics-/-%E2%80%98We-are-not-in-civil-war,but-catastrophe-has-man.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). ——— “Uncertain futures,” Ahram Online, April 3, 2014. Available at http://weekly. ahram.org.eg/News/5868/17/Uncertain-futures.aspx (accessed December 15, 2016). Farer, Tom J., War Clouds on the Horn of Africa: a Crisis for De´tente (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1976). Farnsworth, Stephen J. and Robert S. Lichter, The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of US Presidential Elections, 1988 – 2008 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). Feldman, Stanley, Leoni Huddy, and George E. Marcus, Going to War in Iraq: When Citizens and the Press Matter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge, and the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). ——— The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). ——— Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). ——— “Truth and juridical forms,” in P. Rabinow (ed.), Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954– 1984, Volume 3 (New York: The New Press, 2000). Fox, David J., “Disney will alter song in ‘Aladdin’: Movies: Changes were agreed upon after Arab-Americans complained that some lyrics were racist. Some Arab groups are not satisfied,” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1993. Available at http://articles.latimes.com/1993-07-10/entertainment/ca-11747_1_altered-lyric (accessed June 28, 2015). France 24, “France helped Compaore´ flee Burkina Faso unrest, Hollande says,” France 24, November 4, 2014. Available at http://www.france24.com/en/20141104france-helped-compaore-flee-burkina-faso-unrest-protests-hollande (accessed August 18, 2016).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

239

Francis, Ellen, “The war on Syria’s doctors,” Foreign Policy, August 11, 2016. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/11/the-war-on-syrias-doctorsassad-medicine-underground/ (accessed August 13, 2016). Frank, Andre Gunder, Dependent Accumulation (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 1978). Freeden, Michael, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). ——— “Political ideologies in substance and method: appraising a transformation,” in M. Freeden (ed.), Reassessing Political Ideologies: The Durability of Dissent (New York: Routledge, 2001). ——— “Conclusion: ideology – balance and projections,” in M. Freeden (ed.), Reassessing Political Ideologies: The Durability of Dissent (New York: Routledge, 2001). ——— Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 239 – 40, 242. Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), “Freedom and Justice Party demands independent investigations into allegations of rights violations,” FJP Online, February 24, 2013. Available at http://www.fjponline.com/article.php?id¼1395 (accessed December 15, 2016). Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000). Friedman, Thomas L., The Lexus and the Olive Tree, rev. edn (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2000). Gabbatt, Adam, “‘I Am Chelsea Manning,’ says jailed soldier formerly known as Bradley,” Guardian, August 22, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian. com/world/2013/aug/22/bradley-manning-woman-chelsea-gender-reassignm ent (accessed September 1, 2013). Gabbatt, Adam, Mark Townsend, and Lisa O’Carroll, “‘Occupy’ anti-capitalism protests spread around the world,” Guardian, October 15, 2011. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/16/occupy-protests-europe-londonassange (accessed March 2, 2012). Gallie, W.B., “Essentially contested concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955), pp. 167– 98. Gardner, Lloyd C., The Road to Tahrir Square: Egypt and the United States from the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak (New York: New Press, 2011). Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 2000). Gelvin, James L., The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Gerges, Fawaz A., The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). ——— (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Ghannam, Farha, “Meanings and feelings: local interpretations of the use of violence in the Egyptian revolution,” American Ethnologist 39/1 (2012), pp. 32 – 6. El Ghobashy, Mona, “Egypt looks ahead to portentous year,” Middle East Report, February 2, 2005. Available at http://www.merip.org/mero/mero020205 (accessed December 15, 2016). Ghonim, Wael, Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power: a Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).

240

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Giglio, Mike, “How Wael Ghonim sparked Egypt’s uprising,” Newsweek, February 13, 2011. Available at http://www.newsweek.com/how-wael-ghonim-sparkedegypts-uprising-68727 (accessed August 17, 2016). Giroux, Henry A., “The Quebec student protest movement in the age of neoliberal terror,” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 19/5 (2013), pp. 515– 35. Goffman, Erving, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Lebanon, NH: Northeaster University Press, 1986). Good, Allison, “Debating the war on women,” Foreign Policy, April 24, 2012. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/24/debating-the-war-on-wom en/ (accessed January 3, 2015). Grabe, Maria Elizabeth and Erik Page Bucy, Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971). Gray, Jessica, “Sexual assault during Egypt protests highlights everyday problems for women: campaign,” Huffington Post, July 11, 2013. Available at http://www. huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/sexual-assault-egypt-protests_n_3567282. html (accessed June 5, 2015). Guissou, Basile L., “Le Burkina Faso au-dela` de l’ajustement structurel,” Africa Development 21/2– 3 (1996), pp. 159– 83. El Gundy, Zeinab, “Sheikh Qaradawi cautions Brotherhood on presidential contest,” Ahram Online, March 27, 2012. Available at http://english.ahram.org.eg/News Content/1/64/37805/Egypt/Politics-/Sheikh-Qaradawi-cautions-Brotherhoodon-presidenti.aspx (December 15, 2016). Gutkowski, Stacey, “It’s not all about Islam: misreading secular politics in the Middle East,” Opendemocracy.net, April 25, 2015. Available at https://www. opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/stacey-gutkowski/it%E2%80%99s-notall-about-islam-misreading-secular-politics-in-middle-east (accessed June 15, 2015). Hafez, Sherine, “No longer a bargain: women, masculinity, and the Egyptian uprising,” American Ethnologist 39/1 (2012), pp. 37 –42. Hagberg, Sten, “‘Enough is enough’: an ethnography of the struggle against impunity in Burkina Faso,” Journal of Modern African Studies 40/2 (2002), pp. 217– 46. Al-Haj Saleh, Yassin, “Majoritarian Syria: justice in conflict resolution,” trans. Yasser EzZayyat, Hallin, Daniel C. The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Hama Protest, 2011a. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼XyZW0_cOqF0 (accessed October 30, 2014). ——— 2011b. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼43Al1Sk7MLc (accessed October 30, 2014). Hamed, Yehia, “US military aid will further strangle Egypt’s democracy,” Al Jazeera, April 6, 2015. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/ 04/military-aid-strangle-egypt-democracy-150406072449677.html (accessed January 14, 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

241

Hamid, Shadi, “Rethinking the U.S.-Egypt relationship: How repression is undermining Egyptian stability and what the United States can do,” Brookings, November 3, 2015. Available at http://www.brookings.edu/res earch/testimony/2015/11/03-us-egypt-relationship-hamid (accessed December 14, 2016). Hamilton, Malcom B., “The Elements of the Concept of Ideology,” Political Studies 35/1 (1987), pp. 18 – 38. Hanano, Amal, “Any given Friday,” Foreign Policy, April 18, 2012. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/18/any-given-friday/ (accessed October 5, 2015). Hancock, Jan, Human Rights and US Foreign Policy (New York: Routledge, 2007). Hanieh, Adam, “International financial institutions and Egypt,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Pambazuka Press, 2011), pp. 238– 51. Hanson, Eric O., Religion and Politics in the International System Today (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004). ——— “The fight for ‘real democracy’ at the heart of Occupy Wall Street,” Foreign Affairs, October 11, 2011. Available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ north-america/2011-10-11/fight-real-democracy-heart-occupy-wall-street (accessed August 15, 2015). ——— Declaration (New York: Argo-Navis, 2012). Haring, Melinda, “Can Washington stop doing dumb democracy promotion, please?” Foreign Policy, December 15, 2015. Available at http://foreignpolicy. com/2015/12/15/can-washington-stop-doing-dumb-democracy-promotionplease-usaid/ (accessed February 26, 2017). Harrigan, Jane R. and Hamed El-Said, “The economic impact of IMF and World Bank programs in the Middle East and North Africa: a case study of Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, 1983– 2004,” Review of Middle East Economics and Finance 6/2 (2010), pp. 1 –25. Harsch, Ernest, “Burkina Faso in the winds of liberalisation,” Review of African Political Economy 25/78 (1998), pp. 625– 41. ——— “Urban Protest in Burkina Faso,” African Affairs 108/431 (2009), pp. 263– 88. Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, UK; New York: Blackwell, 1990). ——— The New Imperialism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003). ——— A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005). Hashemi, Nader, Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Hawkes, David, Ideology (The New Critical Idiom) (New York: Routledge, 2003). Hawthorn, Geoffrey, Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Hearst, David, “Why Saudi Arabia is taking a risk by backing the Egyptian coup,” Guardian, August 20, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2013/aug/20/saudi-arabia-coup-egypt (accessed February 26, 2017).

242

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Heith, Diane J., The Presidential Road Show: Public Leadership in an Era of Party Polarization and Media Fragmentation (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2013). Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 2002). Hibou, Be´atrice, The Force of Obedience: The Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia (Malden, MA: Polity, 2011). Hilgers, Mathieu, “Evolution of Political Regime and Evolution of Popular Political Representations in Burkina Faso,” African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 4/9 (2010), pp. 350– 9. Hill, Peter, “‘The civil’ and ‘the secular’ in contemporary Arab politics,” Muftah.org, February 26, 2013. Available at http://muftah.org/the-civil-and-the-secular-incontemporary-arab-politics/#.VbKKRUUe7xY (accessed June 8, 2015). Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Terence O. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York: Mariner Books, 1999). Hoffman, Stanley, “American exceptionalism, the new version,” in M. Ignatieff (ed.), American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Høigilt, Jacob, “Rhetoric and ideology in Egypt’s wasatiyya movement,” Arabica 57/2 (2010), pp. 251 – 66. Holan, Angie D., “Egypt got more foreign aid than anyone besides Israel, says New York Times columnist Ross Douthat,” Politifact, February 4, 2011. Available at http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/04/rossdouthat/egypt-got-more-foreign-aid-anyone-besides-israel-s/ (accessed January 13, 2017). Horovitz, David, “A mass expression of outrage against injustice,” Jerusalem Post, February 25, 2011. Available at http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/ A-mass-expression-of-outrage-against-injustice (accessed June 24, 2015). Howard, Philip N. and Muzammil M. Hussain, “The role of digital media,” Journal of Democracy, 22/3 (2011), pp. 35 – 48. ——— Democracy’s Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Human Rights Watch, “World report 2015: Saudi Arabia.” Available at https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/country-chapters/saudi-arabia (accessed February 26, 2017). Hunt, Michael H., Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987). Huntington, Samuel P., “The clash of civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs 72/3 (1993), pp. 22 – 49. ——— The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Ingersoll, David E., Richard K. Matthews, and Andrew Davison, The Philosophic Roots of Modern Ideology (Cornwall-On-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2009). Ishay, Micheline, “The spring of Arab nations? Paths toward democratic transition,” Philosophy and Social Criticism (2013), pp. 1– 11. Ismail, Salwa, “The Syrian uprising: imagining and performing the nation,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11/3 (2011), pp. 538 – 49. Jabar, Faleh A., Post-Marxism and the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 1997).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

243

Jackson, David, “One reason for Obama’s decision on Libya: Rwanda,” The Oval, USA Today, March 24, 2011. Available at http://content.usatoday.com/ communities/theoval/post/2011/03/one-reason-for-obamas-decision-on-libyarwanda/1#.V83op7VWebI (accessed September 7, 2016). Jackson, Nicholas A., “Neoliberalism as spectacle: economic theory, development and corporate exploitation,” Human Geography 4/3 (2011), pp. 1 – 13. ——— “A failure but the oil keeps flowing: the Chad-Cameroon petroleum development project, in N.L. De Silva and N.A. Jackson (eds), Planet, People and Profit: Striking a Balance (Stockholm: Nordic ePublisher, 2013), pp. 28 – 46. ——— “Perception, governance and extractive industry exploitation: the rise of corporate social responsibility,” in N.L. De Silva and N.A. Jackson (eds), Planet, People and Profit: Striking a Balance (Stockholm: Nordic ePublisher, 2013), pp. 221– 38. Jarjanaz Protest, June 8, 2012. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch? v¼e0ovTebgGRU (accessed October 30, 2014). Jeyaraj, Joseph, “Native informants, ethos, and unsituated rhetoric: some rhetorical issues in postcolonial discourses,” Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 12/1 (2003), pp. 65 – 84. Johnson, Chalmers, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy 1925– 1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). Johnson-Cartee, Karen S., News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004). Jones, Bruce, “The Arusha peace process,” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 131– 6. Al Jumhuriya, October 20, 2016. Available at: http://aljumhuriya.net/en/syrianrevolution/majoritarian-syria-justice-in-conflict-resolution (accessed November 4, 2016). Kadri, Ali, Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment (New York: Anthem Press, 2014). ——— “A depressive pre-Arab uprisings economic performance,” in F.A. Gerges (ed.), The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 80– 106. Kagame, Paul, “Rwandans know why Gaddafi must be stopped,” Times, March 23, 2011. Available at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/ article2956968.ece (accessed December 6, 2016). Kamola, Isaac A., “The global coffee economy and the production of genocide in Rwanda,” Third World Quarterly 28/3 (2007), pp. 571 – 92. Kamrava, Mehran (ed.), Beyond the Arab Spring: The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Kasinof, Laura and David E. Sanger, “US shifts to seek removal of Yemen’s leader, an ally,” New York Times, April 3, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes. com/2011/04/04/world/middleeast/04yemen.html?pagewanted¼all&_r¼0 (accessed January 13, 2017). Kazmi, Ayesha, “Oh, Mona!” AmericanPaki, April 24, 2012. Available at https:// americanpaki.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/oh-mona/ (accessed June 5, 2015). Keating, Joshua, “Who first used the term Arab Spring?” Foreign Policy. November 4, 2011. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/11/04/who-first-used-theterm-arab-spring/ (accessed August 17, 2016).

244

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

——— “When the young women of Egypt need answers, they turn to Tom Friedman,” Foreign Policy, June 11, 2012. Available at http://foreignpolicy.com/ 2012/06/11/when-the-young-women-of-egypt-need-answers-they-turn-to-tom -friedman/ (accessed June 15, 2015). Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Kendall, Diana, Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011). Keohane, Robert O (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977). Kerbel, Matthew R., If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy of Television News (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001). Khalil, Andrea, “Gender paradoxes of the Arab Spring,” The Journal of North African Studies 19/2 (2014), pp. 131– 6. King, Martin Luther, “Letter from a Birmingham jail,” in P. Schumaker (ed.), The Political Theory Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2010), p. 344. Kinsman, Jeremy, “Libya: a case for humanitarian intervention,” Policy Options, October 1, 2011, pp. 81 – 7. Available at http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazi nes/the-new-normal-majority-government/libya-a-case-for-humanitarianintervention/ (accessed December 7, 2016). Kinzer, Stephen, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, 1st edn (New York: Times Books/Henry Holt, 2006). Kirkpatrick, David D., “Obama administration criticizes Egypt in report to Congress,” New York Times, June 7, 2015. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/ 2015/06/08/world/middleeast/obama-administration-criticizes-egypt-inreport-to-congress.html (accessed January 14, 2017). Kirkpatrick, David K., “Recordings suggest Emirates and Egyptian military pushed ousting of Morsi,” New York Times, March 1, 2015. Available at http://www. nytimes.com/2015/03/02/world/middleeast/recordings-suggest-emirates-andegyptian-military-pushed-ousting-of-morsi.html?_r¼1 (accessed February 26, 2017). Kirollos, Mariam, “Sexual violence in Egypt: myths and realities,” Jadaliyya.com, July 16, 2013. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13007/ sexual-violence-in-egypt_myths-and-realities- (accessed February 5, 2015). Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2007). Klinghoffer, Arthur Jay, The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda (New York: New York University Press, 1998). Kristof, Nicholas, “Obama’s worst mistake,” New York Times, August 11, 2016. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/opinion/obamas-worstmistake.html?_r¼0 (accessed December 6, 2016). Kroslak, Daniela, The French Betrayal of Rwanda (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007). Kull, Steven, “Why Muslims are still mad at America,” Global Public Square Blogs, CNN, September 5, 2011. Available at http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn. com/2011/09/05/why-muslims-are-still-mad-at-america/ (accessed March 20, 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

245

Kuperman, Alan J., “Rwanda in retrospect,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000, pp. 94 – 118. Available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/rwanda/200001-01/rwanda-retrospect (accessed December 6, 2016). LaFranchi, Howard, “Obama to Hosni Mubarak: Egypt protests must bring reform,” Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 2011. Available at http://www.csmonitor. com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2011/0128/Obama-to-Hosni-Mubarak-Egypt-protestsmust-bring-reform (accessed January 14, 2017). Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Landler, Mark, “Obama tells Qaddafi to quit and authorizes refugee airlifts,” New York Times, March 3, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/ 04/world/africa/04president.html?_r¼0 (accessed January 13, 2017). Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1991). Leigh, David and Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), pp. 46 – 7. Lesch, David W., “The Arab Spring – and winter – in Syria,” Global Change, Peace & Security 23/3 (2011), pp. 421 – 6. Lesch, David W. and Mark L. Haas (eds), The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2012). Levine, Mark, “Theorizing revolutionary practice: agendas for research on the Arab uprisings,” Middle East Critique 22/3 (2013), pp. 191 – 212. Lewis, Justin. Constructing Public Opinion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1997). London˜o, Ernesto and Greg Miller, “CIA begins weapons delivery to Syrian rebels,” Washington Post, September 11, 2013. Available at https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-tosyrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html (accessed January 13, 2017). Lust, Ellen, Jakob Mathias Wichmann, and Gamal Soltan, “Why fear explains the failure of Egypt’s revolution,” Washington Post, Monkey Cage blog, January 25, 2016. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/ wp/2016/01/25/why-fear-explains-the-failure-of-egypts-revolution/ (accessed December 14, 2016). Lynch, Mark (ed.), The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). MacAskill, Ewen, “Bradley Manning case sparks UN criticism of US government,” Guardian, April 11, 2011. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/apr/11/bradley-manning-juan-mendez-torture (accessed November 18, 2016). Mackey, Robert, “Video that set off Tunisia’s uprising,” New York Times, January 22, 2011. Available at http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/video-thattriggered-tunisias-uprising/?ref¼africa (accessed March 16, 2012). El-Mahdi, Rabab and Philip Marfleet, Egypt: The Moment of Change (London; New York: Zed Books, 2009). Major, Mark, The Unilateral Presidency and the News Media: The Politics of Framing Executive Power (New York: Palgrave, 2014).

246

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Mallat, Chibli and Edward Mortimer, “The background to civil resistance in the Middle East,” in A. Roberts, M.J. Willis, R. McCarthy, and T. G. Ash (eds), Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 1 –29. Malsin, Jared, “Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah sentenced to five years in jail,” Guardian, February 23, 2015. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2015/feb/23/egyptian-activist-alaa-abd-el-fattah-sentenced-five-years-jail (accessed August 18, 2016). Mamdani, Mahmood, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton; Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2001). ——— Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009). ——— “An African reflection on Tahrir Square,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Fahamu, 2012), pp. 198– 210. ——— “The politics of naming: genocide, civil war, insurgency,” London Review of Books, March 8, 2007, pp. 5 – 8. Available at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/m ahmood-mamdani/the-politics-of-naming-genocide-civil-war-insurgency (accessed December 6, 2016). Manji, Firoze, “The depoliticisation of poverty,” in D. Eade (ed.), Development and Rights (Oxford, UK: Oxfam, 1998). ——— “African awakenings: the courage to invent the future,” in F. Manji and S. Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Fahamu, 2012), pp. 1 – 18. Manji, Firoze and Sokari Ekine (eds), African Awakening: The Emerging Revolutions (Oxford, UK: Pambazuka Press, 2011). Mann, Stephen, “Sousveillance: inverse surveillance in multimedia imaging,” in Proceedings of the 12th Annual ACM Conference on Multimedia (New York, 2004), pp. 620– 7. Mantz, Jeffrey W., “Improvisational economies: coltan production in the eastern Congo,” Social Anthropology 16/1 (2008), pp. 34 – 50. Markey, Patrick and Tarek Amara, “Homegrown jihadists with Libya ties target Tunisia’s democracy,” Reuters, July 7, 2015. Available at http://www.reuters. com/article/us-tunisia-security-idUSKCN0PH22I20150707 (accessed February 26, 2017). Marks, Monica L., “Do Arabs really ‘hate’ women? The problem with native informants,” Huffington Post, June 25, 2012. Available at http://www.huffi ngtonpost.com/monica-l-marks/do-arabs-really-hate-wome_b_1453147.html (accessed July 15, 2015). Marx, Karl, Capital: a Critique of Political Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976). Mason, Paul, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions (New York: Verso, 2012), pp. 66– 79. Mbembe´, J. Achille, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). McAdam, Doug, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, “Toward an integrated perspective on social movements and revolution,” in M.I. Lichbach and A. S Zuckerman (eds), Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 142 – 73.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

247

McCamant, John, “Expanding democracy in a world of increasing inequality,” unpublished manuscript, 1998. McKelvey, Tara, “Arming Syrian rebels: where the US went wrong,” BBC News, October 10, 2015. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408 (accessed January 13, 2017). Mekay, Emad, “Exclusive: US bankrolled anti-Morsi activists,” Al Jazeera, July 10, 2013. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/07/ 2013710113522489801.html (accessed February 26, 2017). Melvern, Linda, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London; New York: Zed Books, 2000). Mermin, Jonathan, Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of US Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). Mersch, Sarah, “Tunisia’s ineffective counterterrorism law,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August 6, 2015. Available at http://carnegieendowment.org/ sada/?fa¼60958 (accessed January 14, 2017). Messieh, Nancy, “Live-streaming service Bambuser goes from Egypt’s revolution to its elections,” The Next Web, November 29, 2011. Available at http:// thenextweb.com/me/2011/11/29/live-streaming-service-bambuser-goes-fromegypts-revolution-to-its-elections (accessed August 19, 2015). Metzl, Jamie Frederic, “Rwandan genocide and the international law of radio jamming,” American Journal of International Law 91/4 (1997), pp. 628 – 51. Mikdashi, Maya, “The uprisings will be gendered,” Jadaliyya.com, February 28, 2012. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4506/the-uprisingswill-be-gendered (accessed June 3, 2015). Mitchell, Audra and Liam Kelly, “Peaceful spaces? ‘Walking’ through the new liminal spaces of peacebuilding and development in North Belfast,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 36/4 (2011), pp. 307 – 25. Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991). ——— “The object of development: America’s Egypt,” in J.S. Crush (ed.), Power of Development (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 129 –57. ——— Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002). Moore, Pete W., Doing Business in the Middle East: Politics and Economic Crisis in Jordan and Kuwait (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Moravcsik, Andrew, “The paradox of US human rights policy,” in M. Ignatieff (ed.), American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Morgan, Andy, “The soundtrack to the Arab revolutions—from fear to fury,” Andy Morgan Writes, March 28, 2011. Available at http://www.andymorganwrites.com/ soundtrack-to-the-arab-revolutions-from-fear-to-fury/ (accessed October 21, 2016). Mouffe, Chantal, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (New York: Verso, 2013). Mousa, Sarah, “Eltahawy’s ‘hate’ fuels real war on ‘us,’” Al Jazeera, May 8, 2012. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/ 201255134117758375.html (accessed June 1, 2015). Murrey, Amber, “‘Blaise De´gage! Sankara Vit!’: Burkina Faso’s revolution,” Ceasefire Magazine, November 3, 2014. Available at https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/

248

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

blaise-degage-sankara-vit-burkina-fasos-revolution/ (accessed August 18, 2016). Al-Mustafa, Hamza M., Al Majaal al-’Aam al-iftiradi fi al-thawrah al Sooriyah: Khasa’is, Itijahat, Nacos, Brigitte L., Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, and Robert Y. Shapiro, Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, “Al Majalis alMahaliyyah al-Sooriyah” [“Syrian local councils”], 2012. Available at http:// www.etilaf.org/%D9%85%D9%83%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A7% D9%81/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AC%D8%A7%D9%84%D8% B3-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9.html (accessed October 6, 2015). Nayak, Meghana, “Feminist interrogations of democracy, sexual violence, and the US military,” in R. J. Heberle and V. Grace (eds), Theorizing Sexual Violence (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 147 – 75. ——— “The false choice between universalism and religion/culture,” Politics and Gender 9/1 (2013), pp. 120– 5. ——— “The politics of the ‘global,’” in E. Welty, M. Bolton, M. Nayak, and C. Malone (eds), Occupying Political Science: The Occupy Wall Street Movement from New York to the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 247 –74. ——— Who Is Worthy of Protection? Gender-Based Asylum and US Immigration Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Nayak, Meghana and Eric Selbin, Decentering International Relations (London: Zed Books, 2010). Neocleous, Mark, “The universal adversary will attack: pigs, pirates, zombies, satan and the class war,” Critical Studies on Terrorism 8/1 (2015), pp. 15– 32. New Statesman, “We have a responsibility to protect the Yazidis of Iraq,” New Statesman, August 14, 2014, p.7. Available at http://www.newstatesman.com/ politics/2014/08/leader-we-have-responsibility-protect-yazidis-iraq (accessed December 6, 2016). New Statesman, “We have a responsibility to protect the Yazidis of Iraq,” New Statesman, August 14, 2014, p.7. Available at http://www.newstatesman.com/ politics/2014/08/leader-we-have-responsibility-protect-yazidis-iraq (accessed December 6, 2016). Newbury, Catharine, “Background to genocide: Rwanda,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 23/2 (1995), pp. 12 – 17. Newbury, Catharine and David Newbury, “A Catholic mass in Kigali: contested views of the genocide and ethnicity in Rwanda,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 33/2 – 3 (1999), pp. 292 – 328. Newbury, David, “Understanding genocide,” African Studies Review 41/1 (1998) pp. 73 – 97. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966). ——— The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). ——— Twilight of the Idols, or How One Philosophizes with a Hammer, trans. D. Large (with modifications) (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

249

——— On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moralz Sense, in R. Geuss and A. Nehamas (eds), Writings from the Early Notebooks, trans. L. Lo¨b (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Norton, Anne, Reflections on Political Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). Norton, Quinn, “Anonymous 101 part deux: morals triumph over lulz,” Wired, December 30, 2011. Available at http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/ anonymous-101-part-deux/all/1 (accessed March 1, 2012). Obama, Barack H., “Nobel lecture: a just and lasting peace,” Nobel Prize Committee, December 10, 2009. Available at https://www.nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html (accessed September 7, 2016). Occupied Kafranbel, 2015. Available at https://twitter.com/sebastianx/ status/482480079055126528/ (accessed February 26, 2017). O’Donnell, Guillermo and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by the President on the 20th commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda,” White House, April 6, 2014. Available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/06/ statement-president-20th-commemoration-genocide-rwanda (accessed September 7, 2016). Olson, Parmy, We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency (New York: Back Bay Books, 2012). Oneal, John R. and Bruce Russett, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000). Otayek, Rene´, “The democratic ‘rectification’ in Burkina Faso,” Journal of Communist Studies 8/2 (1992), pp. 82 – 104. Otunnu, Ogenga, “An historical analysis of the invasion by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA),” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 31 – 49. Oue´draogo, Brahima, “Justice campaigners welcome police convictions for fatal beating,” Inter Press Service, August 29, 2011. Available at http://www.ipsnews. net/2011/08/burkina-faso-justice-campaigners-welcome-police-convictions-forfatal-beating/ (accessed August 17, 2016). Page, Benjamin I., Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright, “Democracy and the policy preferences of wealthy Americans,” Perspectives on Politics 11/1 (2013), pp. 51 – 73. Pargeter, Alison, Libya: The Rise and Fall of Qaddafi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). ———, The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power (London: Saqi Books, 2013). Parsons, Adam, “Should we celebrate a decline in global poverty?” Sharing.org, March 16, 2012. Available at http://www.stwr.org/poverty-inequality/shouldwe-celebrate-a-decline-in-global-poverty.html (accessed March 18, 2012). Patterson, Thomas E., Out of Order: An Incisive and Boldly Original Critique of the News Media’s Domination of America’s Political Process (New York: Vintage, 2011).

250

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Pearlman, Wendy, “Diffusion mechanisms as stepping stones: qualitative evidence from Syria,” POMEPS. Available at https://pomeps.org/2016/07/18/diffusionmechanisms-as-stepping-stones-qualitative-evidence-from-syria/ (accessed February 20, 2017). Peet, Richard, Geography of Power: The Making of Global Economic Policy (London; New York: Zed Books Ltd., 2007). Pew Research Center, “Public trust in government: 1958 – 2015,” Pew Research Center, November 23, 2015. Available at http://www.people-press. org/2015/11/23/public-trust-in-government-1958-2015/ (accessed January 13, 2017). Podhoretz, Norman, “The adversary culture and the new class,” in S.E. Bronner (ed.), Twentieth Century Political Theory: a Reader (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 106– 14. Poku, Nana and Anna Mdee, Politics in Africa: A New Introduction (London; New York: Zed Books, 2011). Pollack, Kenneth M., The Persian Puzzle (New York: Random House, 2004). Polletta, Francesca, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Power, Samantha, “Bystanders to genocide,” Atlantic, September 2001. Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/bystanders-to-genocide/ 304571/ (accessed September 7, 2016). ——— “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). Prashad, Vijay, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, 1st edn (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2012). Prunier, Ge´rard, The Rwandan Crisis 1959– 1994: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst & Company, 1995). ——— “The Rwandan Patriotic Front,” in C. Clapham (ed.), African Guerrillas (Oxford, UK: James Currey, 1998), pp. 119 –33. ——— “Ope´ration Turquoise: a humanitarian escape from a political dead end,” in H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: the Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 281– 305. Qassem, Shaaban, “The crisis is a result of a floundering presidency: Haytham Abu Khalil reveals who is really in charge behind the scenes of the Brotherhood,” Correspondents, February 28, 2013. Available at http://www.correspondents.org/ node/1991 (accessed December 15, 2016). Ramadan, Adam, “From Tahrir to the world: the camp as a political public space,” European Urban and Regional Studies 20/1 (2013), pp. 145 – 9. Ramdani, Nabila, “Sexual violence in Egypt: ‘the target is a woman,’” Guardian, July 9, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/09/sexualviolence-egypt-target-woman (accessed June 5, 2015). Rane, Halim, Jacqui Ewart, and John Martinkus, Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises, and Contexts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Raqib, Jamila, “Case study: the Tunisian uprising and protests, December 2010– January 2011,” in G. Sharp (ed.), Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 34 – 52. Rehmann, Jan, “Occupy Wall Street and the question of hegemony: a Gramascian analysis” Socialism and Democracy 27/1 (2013), pp. 1 – 18.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

251

Reilly, Niamh, “Rethinking the interplay of feminism and secularism in a neosecular age,” Feminist Review 97/1 (2011), pp. 5 – 31. Richter, Paul, “Hillary Clinton urges Middle Eastern states to open governments, economies,” LA Times, January 13, 2011. Available at http://articles.latimes. com/2011/jan/13/world/la-fg-clinton-qatar-20110114 (accessed January 14, 2017). Rishmawi, Mervat, “The Arab Charter on Human Rights,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 6, 2009. Available at http://carnegieendowment. org/2009/10/06/arab-charter-on-human-rights/2z1r (accessed February 26, 2017). Rizk, Philip, “‘The next battle will be much more violent’: Interview with Philip Rizk,” Kosmoprolet, January 26, 2015. Available at http://kosmoprolet.org/node/ 152 (accessed August 18, 2016). Roberts, Adam, Michael J. Willis, Rory McCarthy, and Timothy G. Ash (eds), Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016). Robinson, William I., Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Rottinghaus, Brandon, The Provisional Pulpit: Modern Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010). Rovner, Joshua, Fixing the Facts, National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). Ruggie, John Gerard, “American exceptionalism, exemptionalism and global governance,” in M. Ignatieff (ed.), American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). “Ruh al-Thawrah” [“The spirit of the revolution”], Balagh for Media, 2014. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼z9bRLduxm-I (accessed February 1, 2015). Rumelili, Bahar, “Modeling democracy: Western hegemony, Turkey and the Middle East,” in V. Morozov (ed.), Decentering the West: The Idea of Democracy and the Struggle for Hegemony (Abingdon, UK: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 64 – 84. Rustow, Dankwart A., “Transitions to democracy: toward a dynamic model,” Comparative Politics 2/3 (1970), pp. 337 –63. Rutherford, Bruce K., Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Ryan, Yasmine, “Tunisia’s bitter cyberwar,” Al Jazeera, January 6, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/01/20111614145839362.htm l (accessed March 2, 2012). ——— “Tunisia arrests bloggers and rapper,” Al Jazeera, January 7, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/01/20111718360234492.html (accessed January 14, 2017). Sabato, Larry J., Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism and American Politics (Baltimore, MD: Lanahan, 2000). Sadiki, Larbi, “Popular uprisings and Arab democratization,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32/1 (2000), pp. 71 – 95. ——— The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). ——— Rethinking Arab Democratization: Elections without Democracy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009).

252

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

——— “The Arab Spring: ‘the people’ in international relations,” in L. Fawcett (ed.), International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 325– 55. Sadiki, Larbi, Heiko Wimmen, and Layla Al-Zubaidi (eds), Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power (London: Routledge, 2013). Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Sanger, David E., “Obama presses Egypt’s military on democracy,” New York Times, February 11, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/ middleeast/12diplomacy.html (accessed July 20, 2012). Sankara, Thomas, Thomas Sankara Speaks: the Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983 – 87 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1988). Sauter, Molly, The Coming Swarm: DDOS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). Sayigh, Yezid, “Syria’s very local regional conflict,” Carnegie Middle East Center, June 9, 2014. Available at http://carnegie-mec.org/2014/06/09/syria-s-very-localregional-conflict/hd7i (accessed October 4, 2015). Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, “Making anthropology public,” Anthropology Today 25/4 (2009), pp. 1 – 3. Schwedler, Jillian, “Islamists in power? Inclusion, moderation and the Arab uprisings,” Middle East Development Journal 5/1 (March 2013), pp. 1 – 18. ——— “Why academics can’t get beyond moderates and radicals,” Washington Post, February 12, 2015. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/12/why-academics-cant-get-beyond-moderates-andradicals/ (accessed December 14, 2016). Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). Seymour, Richard, “Istanbul park protests sow the seeds of a Turkish spring,” Guardian, May 31, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentis free/2013/may/31/istanbul-park-protests-turkish-spring (accessed July 2, 2015). Sha’ban, Yusuf and Ahmad Sa‘id Hasanin, “Bil-fidiyu wa al-suwr . . . Ahmad Kamal Abu al-Majd: al-sisi asbah mukhifan” (“Ahmad Kamal Abu al-Magd in video and pictures: Sisi has become scary”), Tahrir, July 7, 2015. Available at http:// www.tahrirnews.com/posts/251610 (accessed December 15, 2016). Sharkey, Noel and Sarah Knuckey, “Occupy Wall Street’s ‘occucopter’—who’s watching whom?,” Guardian, December 21, 2011. Available at http://www. guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/21/occupy-wall-streetoccucopter-tim-pool (accessed March 20, 2012). Shawcross, William, The Shah’s Last Ride (New York: Touchstone, 1988). Shihab-Eldin, Ahmed and Ben Connors, “The network revolution,” Al Jazeera, February 21, 2011. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/empire/ 2011/02/201121614532116986.html (accessed March 19, 2012). Shirky, Clay, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (New York: Penguin, 2008). Shuffield, Robin, Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man (San Francisco: California Newsreel, 2006). Shuraqi, Hassan, “Sa‘ad al-Din Ibrahim: ima musalaha al-ikhwan aw al-harb alahliyya,” [“Saad Eddin Ibrahim: either reconciliation with the Brotherhood or

BIBLIOGRAPHY

253

civil war”], Arabi 21, November 14, 2015. Available at http://arabi21.com/ story/872733 (accessed December 15, 2016). Sitrin, Marina, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006). Sjoberg, Laura and Jonathan Whooley, “The Arab Spring for women? Representations of women in Middle East politics in 2011,” Journal of Women, Politics and Policy 36/3 (2015), pp. 261 – 84. Sloterdijk, Peter, Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). Smirl, Lisa, “Building the other, constructing ourselves: spatial dimensions of international humanitarian response,” International Political Sociology 2/3 (2008), pp. 236– 53. Smith, Lee, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations (New York: Anchor Books, 2011). Speirs, Mike, “Agrarian change and the revolution in Burkina Faso,” African Affairs 90/358 (1991), pp. 89 – 110. Spencer, Richard, “Egypt protests: President Mubarak sacks cabinet but refuses to step down,” Telegraph, January 28, 2011. Available at http://www.telegraph.co. uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8290045/Egypt-protestsPresident-Mubarak-sacks-cabinet-but-refuses-to-step-down.html (accessed January 13, 2017). Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward A History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Stacher, Joshua, “The brothers and the war,” Middle East Report 250 (Spring 2009), pp. 2– 9. Available at www.merip.org/mer/mer250/brothers-war (accessed December 14, 2016). Starr, Paul, Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism (New York: Basic Books, 2007). Steger, Manfred B., Globalism: The New Market Ideology (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002). ——— The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Steger, Manfred B., James Goodman, and Erin K. Wilson, Justice Globalism: Ideology, Crises, Policy (London: SAGE, 2013). Stephen, Chris, “Libya’s Arab Spring: the revolution that ate its children,” Guardian, February 16, 2015. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/ 16/libyas-arab-spring-the-revolution-that-ate-its-children (accessed July 13, 2015). Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, “Still crusading, but now on the inside,” New York Times, March 29, 2011. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/world/ 30power.html (accessed December 6, 2016). Su, Alice, “The boy named Jihad: from the ashes of the Arab Spring to the battlefields of Syria,” Atlantic, June 19, 2015. Available at http://www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/jihad-jordan-syria-isis/396041/ (accessed July 3, 2015). Sunstein, Cass, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011). Swarr, Amanda Lock and Richa Nagar (eds), Critical Transnational Feminist Praxis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).

254

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Syria Civil Defense, 2016. Available at http://syriacivildefense.org/ (accessed September 10, 2016). Syria Mobile Film Festival, 2015. Available at http://syriamobilefilms.com/en/ (accessed September 11, 2016). El-Tablawy, Tarek and Alaa Shahine, “Egypt’s president-elect still eyeing IMF loan,” Daily Star, June 30, 2012. Available at http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Business/ Middle-East/2012/Jun-30/178821-egypts-president-elect-still-eyeing-imfloan.ashx (accessed November 30, 2016). Tarrow, Sidney, “War, rights, and contention: Lasswell V. Tilly,” in R. M. Smith and S. R. Ben-Porath (eds), Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 35– 57. Teso´n, Fernando R., “Don’t underestimate the costs of inaction,” Reason 46/8 (2015), pp. 34 – 7. Teti, Andrea, “Beyond lies the wub: the challenges of (post)democratization,” Middle East Critique 21/1 (2012), pp. 5 – 24. Teti, Andrea and Gennaro Gervasio, “After Mubarak, before transition: the challenges for Egypt’s democratic opposition,” Interface 4/1 (2012), pp. 102– 12. Tetre´ault, Mary Ann, “The winter of the Arab Spring in the Gulf monarchies,” Globalizations 8/5 (2011), pp. 629– 37. Tilly, Charles, “War making and state making as organized crime,” in P.B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, and T. Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 169– 91. ——— “Where do rights come from?” in L. Mjøset (ed.), Contributions to the Comparative Study of Development (Oslo: Institute for Social Research, 1992), pp. 9 – 37. Toscano, Alberto, Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (New York: Verso, 2010), pp. 91 – 2, 94, 215– 16, 236– 7, 251– 2. Totten, Michael J., “Arab Spring or Islamist Winter,” World Affairs, January/ February 2012. Available at http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/arabspring-or-islamist-winter (accessed July 25, 2017). Towns, Ann, Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Tripp, Charles, Islam and the Moral Economy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). ——— The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Truman, Harry S. “The Truman Doctrine,” to a joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947. Available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp (accessed February 26, 2017). Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1969). “Two Arab countries fall apart,” The Economist, June 14, 2014. Available at http:// www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21604230-extreme-islamistgroup-seeks-create-caliphate-and-spread-jihad-across (accessed June 18, 2015). Ukman, Jason and Liz Sly, “Obama: Syrian president Assad must step down,” Washington Post, August 18, 2011. Available at https://www.washingtonpost. com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/obama-syrian-president-assad-muststep-down/2011/08/18/gIQAM75UNJ_blog.html (accessed January 13, 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

255

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations (New York: United Nations Publications, 2003). ——— Human Development Report 2015 (New York, United Nations Development Programme, 2015). Available at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/ 2015_human_development_report.pdf (accessed February 27, 2017). US Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Emergency, “National Planning Scenario #11.” Available at http://www.phe.gov/ Preparedness/planning/playbooks/rdd/Pages/scenario.aspx (accessed January 14, 2017). US Government Printing Office, The Iraq Liberation Act. Available at https://www. gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-105publ338/html/PLAW-105publ338.htm (accessed December 27, 2015). Uvin, Peter, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998). Wahlrab, Amentahru, “Nonviolence and Globalization,” in M.B. Steger, P. Battersby, and J. Siracusa (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Globalization (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications USA, 2014), pp. 727–38. ——— “Speaking truth to power: hip hop and the African awakening,” in M.K. Clark and M.M. Koster (eds), Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), pp. 49 – 63. ——— “Fostering global security,” in E.D. Jacob (ed.), Rethinking Security in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave, 2017), pp. 127– 41. ——— “Imagining global nonviolence,” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 16/1– 3 (2017), pp. 193 – 207. ——— “‘Somalia’s terrorist shabaab’: the global political economy of impoverishment and disempowerment,” in T. Falola and J. Abidogun (eds), Issues in African Political Economy (Durham, Carolina Academic Press, 2017), pp. 13 – 28. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 1974). Wallis, Andrew, Silent Accomplice: the Untold Story of France’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide (London; New York: I.B.Tauris, 2014). Warren, Mark, “Liberal constitutionalism as ideology: Marx and Habermas,” Political Theory 17/4 (1989), pp. 511 –34. Weber, Cynthia, “Citizenship, security, humanity,” International Political Sociology 4/1 (2010), pp. 80 – 5. ——— “Designing safe citizens,” Citizenship Studies 12/2 (2008), pp. 125 – 42. Weber, Max, “The profession and vocation of politics,” in P. Lassman and R. Speirs (eds), Weber: Political Writings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 306– 69. Wedel, Janine R., Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market (New York: Basic Books, 2009). ——— Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security, Kindle edition (New York: Pegasus Books, 2014). Weiss, Thomas G., “RtoP alive and well after Libya,” Ethics and International Affairs 25/3 (2011), pp. 1 – 6. Weldes, Jutta, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall (eds), Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

256

US APPROACHES

TO THE

ARAB UPRISINGS

Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Whelan, Daniel J., Indivisible Human Rights: A History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Whitaker, Brian, “How a man setting fire to himself sparked an uprising in Tunisia,” Guardian, December 28, 2010. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2010/dec/28/tunisia-ben-ali (accessed October 21, 2016). Whitehead, Laurence, “The imposition of democracy: The Caribbean,” in L. Whitehead (ed.), The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996). Whitlow, William, “Burkina Faso shaken by widespread protests,” World Socialist Web Site, April 26, 2011. Available at https://www.wsws.org/en/ articles/2011/04/burk-a26.html (accessed August 17, 2016). Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky, “The path to moderation: strategy and learning in the formation of Egypt’s Wasat Party,” Comparative Politics 36/2 (2004), pp. 205– 28. ——— The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). Winegar, Jessica, “The privilege of revolution: gender, class, space, and affect in Egypt,” American Ethnologist 39/1 (2012), pp. 67 – 70. Wolin, Sheldon S., Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). Woltering, Robbert, “Post-Islamism in distress? A critical evaluation of the theory in Islamist-dominated Egypt,” Die Welt des Islams 54/1 (2014), pp. 107 –18. Wood, B. Dan, The Myth of Presidential Representation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Yazbek, Samar, A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution, trans. Max Weiss (London: Haus Publishing, 2011). Zaller, John R, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Zunes, Stephen, Tinderbox: US Foreign Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (London: Zed, 2003).

INDEX

References in bold refer to tables, references in italics refer to figures. al-Abdullah, Hadi (b. 1987) Spirit of the Revolution, The, 177 Abu-Rish, Ziad, 187, 192 activism, 217– 20, 222– 3 activists, 212, 216 Afghanistan, 37 – 8, 75, 76 Africa, 88, 143, 191 African Awakenings, 142, 199– 200 agency, 5, 17, 128, 144, 163, 171 Althusser, Louis (1918 – 90), 13 – 14, 16 Amar, Paul, 119, 122, 125, 133– 4, 186 American Ethnologist, 154 Anderson, Lisa (b.1950), 187, 194 Anonymous, 213– 14, 221 Arab people, 131 politics, 163 socialism, 199 states, 168 – 9 uprisings 54, 58, 59, 224 women, 118, 120 Arab Spring, 25, 29, 31, 89, 142, 164– 6 al-Ariyan, Issam (b. 1953), 102, 103 armed forces, 165 al-Assad, Bashar (President Syria, 2000– present), 36, 50, 55, 174, 176

Assange, Julian (b. 1971), 212 – 13 authoritarianism Arab uprisings, 1 Egypt, 146, 221, 225 governance, 154 al-hirak, 167– 8 legitimacy, 3 rebellion, 170 – 1 safe citizens, 188 Sankara, Thomas (1949 – 87), 149 secularism, 124 students, 212 Syria, 164 United States of America (USA), 5, 38, 198 unsafe citizens, 192 – 5 authority, 17, 19, 153, 155 –6 Bahrain Arab uprisings, 49 death counts of protestors, 61 – 2 human rights, 60 media coverage, 50, 56, 58 security forces, 188 United States of America (USA), 26 US priorities 54 Western powers, 89

258

US APPROACHES

TO THE

Barclay, Roddy, 151, 152 Beinin, Joel, 146, 152 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine (President Tunisia, 1987– 2011) Anonymous, 213– 14 fall from power, 184, 192, 194 internet technologies, 217 protestors, 193 –4 protests, 77 revolution, 188 WikiLeaks, 215 bilateral relations, 27– 8, 37, 87 al-Bishri, Judge Tariq (b. 1933), 106 – 7 al-Tajaddud al-hadari, 108 Ummati fi al‘alam (2014), 108 Blackberry Messenger, 214– 15 Bouazizi, Mohamed (1984– 2011), 77, 142, 183, 214, 215, 217 Burkina Faso 1998 uprisings, 151 Arab uprisings, 7– 8 fear, 152– 6 governance, 145 media coverage, 141 – 2 neoliberalism, 142 opposition, 150 protests, 148– 51 representation, 143 Sankara, Thomas (1949– 87), 148– 51 self-adjustment, 148– 9 Zongo, Justin, 141 Bush, George W. (President USA 2001– 9), 1, 55 capabilities, 215 – 20 center – periphery model, 166 –9 change, 166–9, 211 Chouli, Lila, 151, 152– 3 citizenship, 8, 191 civil society, 3, 188 civil wars genocide, 85 internationalized, 176

ARAB UPRISINGS

interventions, 88 Libya and Syria, 188 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 28, 31 political interventions, 86 Rwanda, 82 Syria, 172 Clinton, Bill (President USA 1993–2001), 35, 75, 79 – 80 Clinton, Hillary (b. 1947), 78, 196 Cold War, 27, 37 collaborative production, 222 – 3, 225 Compaore´, Blaise (President Burkina Faso 1987 –2014) brutality, 153 Coˆte d’Ivoire, 151 debt creation, 156 fall from power, 148 leadership, 145 structural adjustment framework (IMF), 149 violence, 141 conflicts, 26, 39, 51, 76 constraint, 152– 6 Constructing Public Opinion, 52 context, 4, 167 contradictions, 24 – 5, 34 – 5 corporate exploitation, 143, 145, 148 Coˆte d’Ivoire, 89, 151 Counter Hegemonic Bloc 210 credibility, 19, 25 critical analysis, 1 – 2, 4, 13 culture, 17, 123 death counts of protestors, 63 democracy, 97 Arab uprisings, 1, 49, 59, 68 Arab women, 118 Argentina, 220 Burkina Faso, 148 discourses, 135 domestic politics, 28 Egypt, 65 foreign policy, 13, 33 – 4

INDEX gender, 117 international hierarchy, 125– 6 internet technologies, 225 Islam, 3, 124 media coverage, 51 – 2, 60, 63 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 4 misogyny, 119 policy makers, 26 promotion, 2 quality, 126 salience 61 secularism, 123 theories, 4 United States of America (USA), 2, 49, 169– 70, 198 US foreign policy, 25 Western ideology, 12 women, 119, 120–3 women’s rights, 7, 121 democratization Arab Spring, 49, 169 –72 Arab uprisings, 2– 3 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 121 Rwanda, 76, 87 sexual violence, 134 women’s rights, 118 developed nations, 14, 17 dictatorships, 13, 25, 32, 196 digital communications, 208, 218 discourses, 1, 117, 135 disintegration, 126, 178 dissent, 180, 209, 210, 211 domestic politics, 27 – 8, 30 drones, 76, 220 dynamics, 166 – 9 economic development, 18 – 19 economic interventions, 85 – 6 Egypt Arab uprisings, 7– 8, 32, 49 authoritarianism, 221, 225 civil disobedience, 188

259

democracy, 63 democratization, 171 dictatorships, 207 foreign debt, 147– 8 al-hirak, 163 human rights, 60 Islamist Liminars, 102 – 10 liminal individuals, 99 live stream, 219 media coverage, 50, 56, 58, 141 – 2 military rule, 196 misogyny, 128 neoliberalism, 142, 145– 8 polarization, 110 politics, 97 – 8 post-colonial states, 191 protests, 3, 147, 175 reconciliation, 109 reforms, 128 representation, 145 resistance, 144– 5 Saeed, Khaled Mohamed (1982 – 2010), 141 safe citizens, 189 sexual violence, 120– 1 social media, 183 structural adjustment framework (IMF), 146 surveys, 65 United States of America (USA), 24, 26 US priorities 54, 55 violence, 153 Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), 146 Electronic Jacobins, 212 – 14 Eltahawy, Mona (b. 1967) Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, 128– 9 knowledge production, 133 misogyny, 134 narrative, 130 Seattle Times, 132

260

US APPROACHES

TO THE

“Why Do They Hate Us?”, 127– 8 women’s rights, 119 expectations, 53 –7 exploitation, 143, 148, 156, 157, 166, 223 external influence, 176 extremism, 38, 107, 118 Facebook activists, 216 Bouazizi, Mohamed (1984 – 2011), 214, 215 horizontalism, 221 revolution, 192 –3 Tunisia, 183 – 4 value, 217 fear, 152– 6 foreign aid, 85, 146 foreign influence, 178 Foreign Policy, 127–8, 130 foreign policy contradictions, 24 – 5 declared policy goals, 12 – 13, 34 domestic support, 56 human rights, 28 ideology, 18, 20 – 1 inconsistencies, 28 liberalism, 24 liberalist ideology, 27 media coverage, 67 news content, 51 paradox, 38 policy shift, 35 – 6 politicians, 61 public opinion, 53, 67 public support, 65 regime change, 36 Rwanda, 78 Rwanda Remorse, 81 United States of America (USA), 1, 2, 5 –6, 14– 15 Western powers, 124 Yemen, 56

ARAB UPRISINGS

Foucault, Michel (1926 – 84), 16, 22– 3, 184 France, 84 –5, 87, 196 Freedom and Justice Party (Egypt), 103, 128 freedom of information, 212– 13 Freire, Paulo (1921– 97) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 171 Friedman, Thomas (b. 1953), 134, 189, 199 al-Futuh, ‘Abd al-Munim Abu (b. 1951), 102, 103– 4, 108– 9 futureless students, 211 – 12 Gaddafi, Muammar (President Libya, 1969–2011) Arab uprisings, 50 Benghazi, 77 killed, 77 Obama, Barack (President USA, 2009– 17), 55 public opinion, 65 – 6 “responsibility to protect” (R2P), 88 – 9 War on Terrorism, 89 – 90 gender, 117, 128 genocide, 76, 79, 85, 86, 90 – 1 Ghonim, Wael (b. 1980) Revolution, 2.0 142 global power, 123– 7 Global South, 119, 127, 133, 135, 191–2 globalization African Awakenings, 199– 200 Arab states, 199 Arab uprisings, 9, 198 center – periphery model, 166 exploitation, 143 Global South, 191–2 ideology, 18 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 29 production, 222 resistance, 210

INDEX unemployment, 211 governance, 145, 154, 208, 224 government, 2, 18, 32, 170 Gramsci, Antonio (1860 – 1937), 98, 208 Great Britain see United Kingdom Habyarimana, Juve´nal (President Rwanda 1973– 94), 78– 9, 84, 86, 87 al-Hadidi, Dr Muhammad, 104– 5, 109 Hardt, Michael (b. 1960), 16, 221, 224 Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution, 128 Hibou, Be´atrice, 153, 154 al-hirak agency, 163 Arab Spring, 164 – 6, 179 authoritarianism, 171 context, 167 defined, 163 democratization, 170 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 165 Syria, 172– 3, 174, 175, 178 Hobbes, Thomas (1588 – 1679) Leviathan, 184, 189 horizontalism, 220– 2, 225 human rights Arab uprisings, 1, 58, 68 death counts of protestors 63 democracy, 13 Egypt, 60 foreign policy, 18, 33 – 4 media coverage, 51 – 2 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 28, 32, 61 – 2 policy makers, 26 salience 60 United States of America (USA), 6, 27, 32, 36 – 7, 49 Western ideology, 12 women’s rights, 7 humanitarian aid, 18 – 19

261

ideological state apparatus, 16 ideology Althusser, Louis (1918 – 90), 13 – 14 Arab Spring, 165 foreign policy, 13, 20 – 1 international relations, 16 liberalism, 15 – 27 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 27 moderation, 101 policy makers, 22 prejudice, 23– 4 Rwanda Remorse, 77– 81 sovereignty, 21 ikhwan islahiyyun, 102 importance, 64, 110 – 11, 118 influence, 49, 216 information dissemination, 52, 68, 216 instability, 81, 88, 90 insurrection, 31, 55 – 6 international hierarchy, 125– 6 international law, 32, 36 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 145–6, 150 international relations analysis, 208 Arab uprisings, 3 consequences, 19 democracy promotion, 2 democratization, 169 ideology, 16 liberalist ideology, 27 metaphor, 21 political margins, 164 “responsibility to protect” (R2P), 34 Rwanda, 85– 6 scholarship, 23 – 4 internet technologies, 207, 217, 224 –5 interventions Arab uprisings, 62 Global South, 135 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 126 Rwanda, 88

262

US APPROACHES

TO THE

United States of America (USA), 34, 75 –6, 81 Iran, 28 – 9, 37 Iraq, 21, 25 – 6, 75 Iraq Liberation Act (1998, USA), 35 – 6 Islam, 3, 101, 124 Islamic State (ISIS), 76, 172 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), 126 Islamism Arab Spring, 165 Arab uprisings, 199 ideology, 18 liminal individuals, 98 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 38, 126 Syria, 177, 178 women’s rights, 122– 3 Islamist Liminars, 102 – 10 al-jama‘ al-islamiyya, 102 Al Jazeera, 184, 220 Jordan, 187, 188 Kagame, Paul (President Rwanda 2000– present), 78, 80, 83 Kerry, John (Secretary of State, USA 2013– 17), 11, 78 knowledge, 23, 130, 131, 133, 209, 223 legitimacy authoritarianism, 3 authority, 17 government, 18 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 26 National Transitional Council (NTC), 77 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah (President Egypt, 2014– present), 108 Syrian uprising, 176 violence, 186 Leviathan, 184, 189

ARAB UPRISINGS

Lewis, Justin Constructing Public Opinion, 52 liberalism, 15 – 27, 34 – 5, 128 liberalist ideology, 27, 34, 38 Libya airstrikes, 76, 77 Arab Spring, 126 civil wars, 188 death counts of protestors, 61 – 2 democratization, 171 dictatorships, 207 al-hirak, 163 human rights, 60 interventions, 77, 88 media coverage, 50, 56 protests, 77, 175 public opinion, 65 – 6, 67 Security Council Resolution, 1973 78 state collapse, 90 US priorities 54, 55 liminal individuals, 97– 8, 102, 105, 108, 110– 11 liminality, 98 – 9, 100– 1, 107, 111 Live Stream, 219– 20, 225 al-Magd, Kamal Abu (b. 1930), 106, 109–10 Mamdani, Mahmood (b. 1946), 83, 194–5 manipulation, 64, 67 – 8 Manji, Firoz (b. 1950), 142, 191, 198, 199–200 Mason, Paul (b. 1960), 212, 216, 221 media, 36, 63 – 7, 68, 143, 156 media coverage Africa, 191 Arab Spring, 183 Arab uprisings, 6, 50, 51, 57, 67 Egypt, 122, 141– 2 expectations, 53 – 7 frequency, 67 human rights, 60 impact, 56

INDEX Muslim Brotherhood, 155 politicization, 68 Tunisia, 184 United States of America (USA), 52–3 Yemen, 56 Middle East and North Africa (MENA) al-hirak, 165 Arab Spring, 49 Arab uprisings, 2– 3, 184 autocracy, 170 civil wars, 31 democracy, 2 democratization, 121, 169 dissent, 180 domestic politics, 27 – 8 enfranchisement, 5 extremism, 38 foreign policy paradox, 38 ideology, 14 imperialism, 35 Islamism, 18 liberalist ideology, 27 oppression, 198 protests, 185 reforms, 38– 9 safe citizens, 192 scholarship, 23 self-determination, 4 social media, 183 social unrest, 30 –1 sovereignty, 21 United States of America (USA), 11, 13, 34 unsafe citizens, 190 uprisings, 188 US foreign policy, 15, 25 war burnout, 67 women’s rights, 118, 128, 134, 135 militarization, 125, 177, 179 military intervention, 82– 5 military rule, 144– 5, 196 military spending, 86 misogyny, 119, 125, 128, 131

263

moderation, 97, 98, 99 – 102 moral authority, 19, 25, 34, 75 Morsi, Mohamed (President Egypt 2012–13), 103, 106, 107 Mubarak, Hosni (President Egypt 1981–2011) Arab uprisings, 50 fall from power, 142, 192 foreign aid, 146 internet technologies, 217 overthrown, 147 revolution, 188 Saeed, Khaled Mohamed (1982 – 2010), 141 United States of America (USA), 196 US allies, 55 violence, 155 Muslim Brotherhood banned, 107 Egypt, 32 growth, 164 Islamist Liminars, 102 – 3 liminal individuals, 108 – 9 persecution, 110 in power, 104– 5 violence, 155 women’s rights, 122 narrative Arab Spring, 142, 156 Arab uprisings, 1, 184 corporate entities, 143 Eltahawy, Mona (b. 1967), 130 neoliberalism, 144 revolution, 176 – 9 Syria, 174 women, 123 women’s rights, 121 Nasser, Gamal Abdel (President Egypt 1956–70), 145– 6, 191 native informants, 129– 31 NATO, 77, 175 Nayak, Meghana, 119– 20, 123– 4 Negri, Antonio (b. 1933), 16, 221, 224

264

US APPROACHES

TO THE

Neocleous, Mark, 188, 196– 7 neoliberalism Arab Spring, 156 Burkina Faso, 142, 149 debt creation, 154 disruption, 224 Egypt, 145–8 narrative, 144 resistance, 210, 214 students, 212 United States of America (USA), 209 Networked “Wretched of the Earth”, 214– 15 networks, 216– 17 New York Times, 134, 196 nonviolent protests, 49, 198 Obama, Barack (President USA, 2009– 17) Arab uprisings, 126 foreign policy, 51, 75 Libya, 77 Mubarak, Hosni (President Egypt 1981– 2011), 196 public opinion, 67 Rwanda Remorse, 90 Syria, 55, 56, 178 – 9 US priorities, 54 –5 opposition, 150, 224 oppression, 118, 120, 124, 131, 198 Pakistan, 37, 76 Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 171 peoplehood see al-hirak persecution, 109, 110 Pew Research Center, 65 – 6 policies Arab socialism, 199 liberalism, 27 neoliberalism, 146 United States of America (USA), 3, 11, 14, 90 policy makers, 22, 26, 76 policy shift, 35 – 6

ARAB UPRISINGS

politics analysis, 98– 9 ideology, 15, 17 liminality, 98 Middle Eastern politics, 97 political action, 208 political agency, 2 political interventions, 86 – 8 political margins, 164 political nationalism, 145 – 6 political power, 23 political reforms, 88 political science, 17 political stability, 97 political theory, 97 Rwanda Remorse, 81 transformation, 163 women, 121 power Arab states, 168 authority, 153 Compaore´, Blaise (President Burkina Faso 1987– 2014), 150 corporate entities, 143 Counter Hegemonic Bloc 210 debt creation, 154 democracy, 119 exploitation, 156 horizontalism, 220 – 2 internet technologies, 224 – 5 relations, 164, 166 relationships, 120 revolutionaries, 208 state identity, 30 United States of America (USA), 32, 49 vacuum, 168 power-knowledge regime, 22 – 3 protest culture, 148 – 51 protestors agency, 5 Bahrain, 188 killed, 61 punishments, 125

INDEX unsafe citizens, 184 women, 121 women’s rights, 117 protests 2011 Burkina Faso, 151 al-hirak, 171 Arab uprisings, 49, 167, 185 Burkina Faso, 141, 148– 51 context, 4 Egypt, 3, 147 Libya, 77 media coverage, 64 power, 168 Qashoush, Ibrahim (1977– 2011), 174 salience 65 suppression, 62 Syria, 8 Tunisia, 193 public opinion Arab uprisings, 51 information dissemination, 53 manipulation, 64, 67 – 8 media, 63 –7 media coverage, 56 United States of America (USA), 52 –3 war burnout, 67 public space, 223, 224 public support, 64, 65 Al Qaeda, 38, 198 rebellion, 170– 1 reconciliation, 109, 110 reforms, 38– 9 regime change, 36, 148 religion, 119, 123, 124, 128 representation Arab Spring, 49 Arabs, 127 Burkina Faso, 143 Egypt, 145 Electronic Jacobins, 212 – 14

265

Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 5 Mobile Film Festival, 177 women, 127 repression Arab uprisings, 32, 55 dissent, 180 Egypt, 145, 147 men, 131 neoliberalism, 142 power, 156 stability, 2 resistance Anonymous, 213 neoliberalism, 210, 212, 214 people, 144 power, 156 structural constraints, 153 “responsibility to protect” (R2P), 34, 88 revolution, 49, 176 – 9, 189– 90 Revolution 2.0, 142 rights, 5, 186, 187, 189 riots, 214 – 15 Rwanda Clinton, Bill (President USA 1993– 2001), 75 democratization, 87 economic interventions, 85 –6 France, 84 – 5 genocide, 76, 79 –80, 85, 90 –1 interventions, 78 –9, 81 military intervention, 82– 5 military spending, 86 political interventions, 86 – 8 political reforms, 88 Tutsis, 82 United States of America (USA), 6, 76 US policies, 90 Western interventions, 82 – 8 Rwanda Remorse, 76, 77 – 81, 89 – 90 Rwandan Patriotic Front civil wars, 82

266

US APPROACHES

TO THE

Habyarimana, Juve´nal (President Rwanda 1973– 94), 87 invade Rwanda, 83 Kagame, Paul (President Rwanda 2000– present), 80 United States of America (USA), 76, 87 US allies, 83–4 Saeed, Khaled Mohamed (1982 – 2010), 141, 212, 218– 19 safe citizens, 184 – 5, 189– 90, 192 salience, 58, 60, 61, 65 Sankara, Thomas (1949– 87), 145, 148– 51, 156 Saudi Arabia Arab uprisings, 49 death counts of protestors, 61 – 2 human rights, 28, 60 human rights abuses, 29 media coverage, 50, 56 United States of America (USA), 26, 36 uprisings, 188 US priorities 54 scholarship, 23 – 4, 157 Schwedler, Jillian, 97, 107 secularism, 119, 122– 3, 124, 177 security state, 125, 133, 186 self-adjustment, 148– 9 self-determination, 4, 18, 36 self-immolation, 77, 142, 183, 214, 215, 217 sexual harassment, 128, 133 sexual violence, 120 – 2, 134 al-Shatir, Khayrat (b. 1950) 103, 105 Shukair, Samih Ya Haif (What a Shame) 176 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah (President Egypt 2014– present), 108, 109, 147 Sjoberg, Laura, 118 – 19, 121– 2, 123 smart phones, 217– 19, 225 social change, 198

ARAB UPRISINGS

identity, 210 unrest, 30 – 1 welfare, 147 social media activists, 224 Arab Spring, 183 Arab uprisings, 9, 29, 207 capabilities, 215 – 20 collaborative production, 222 function, 216 horizontalism, 220 Networked “Wretched of the Earth” 214– 15 students, 212 socialism, 145 – 8 sovereign states, 190– 2 sovereignty Burkina Faso, 150 citizenship, 8, 185 democracy, 119, 124 ideology, 21 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 4 safe citizens, 189 – 90 security states, 125 Syria, 174 Tunisia, 184 United States of America (USA), 34 unsafe citizens, 197 Spirit of the Revolution, The, 177 stability, 2, 26, 32, 39, 99 state collapse, 90 formation, 187 identity, 29 – 30, 185 production, 146 state – citizen tensions, 193 structural adjustment framework (IMF), 191 structural adjustment program (SAP, IMF), 146, 149 structural power relations, 166 students, 211, 212, 215

INDEX suppression, 62, 117, 146, 151 surveys, 64 – 5 Syria Arab uprisings, 8, 49, 175 authoritarianism, 164 civil wars, 207 death counts of protestors, 61 – 2 al-hirak, 163, 172– 3 human rights, 60 insurrection, 55 – 6 international interference, 172 international support, 178 legitimacy, 176 media coverage, 50, 56 militarization, 177, 179 public opinion, 66 – 7 revolution narrative, 176 – 9 Rwanda Remorse, 90 security forces, 188 self-representation, 173 sovereignty, 21 state breakdown, 179 United States of America (USA), 25 –6, 76 US priorities, 54t1, 55 Western powers, 89 al-Tajaddud al-hadari, 108 terrorism, 176– 7 Teti, Andrea, 104, 107 Tilly, Charles (1929 –2008), 186, 187 trade unions, 150, 152 transformation, 163, 173 Tripp, Charles, 166, 174 truth, 22 – 3 Tunisia Arab uprisings, 31, 32, 90 Bouazizi, Mohamed (1984 – 2011), 77, 142, 214 dictatorships, 207 al-hirak, 163 music, 184 protests, 175 reforms, 171

267

revolution, 49 social media, 183 – 4 uprisings, 188, 192– 3 violence, 185 Tutsis, 82, 85 Twitter, 216, 217, 221 Uganda, 82 – 3, 195 Ummati fi al‘alam (2014), 108 United Kingdom, 37 United Nations, 77, 79, 87, 88 – 9, 177, 192 United States of America (USA) Arab uprisings, 1, 11 democracy, 2 democratization, 169– 70 foreign policy, 2, 5– 6 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 4, 34 neoliberalism, 209 policies, 3 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 146 unsafe citizens, 196 – 7 unsafe citizens authoritarianism, 192 –5 futureless students, 211 – 12 insecure states, 185 revolutionaries, 190 sovereign states, 190– 2 sovereignty, 197 victory, 194 Upper Volta see Burkina Faso US allies, 55, 65, 83 – 4 US interventions, 62, 83 US media, 51, 52 US priorities, 54, 57 video cameras, 217 – 19 violence Arab Spring, 165 causes, 117 against citizens, 184, 188, 190

268

US APPROACHES

TO THE

Compaore´, Blaise (President Burkina Faso 1987– 2014), 141 Egypt, 146, 154– 5 interventions, 81, 90 modern states, 186 secularism, 123 sexual violence, 120 –1 Tunisia, 185, 193 Western powers, 88 women protestors, 125 violent repression, 31, 67 volition, 152– 6 War on Terrorism, 1, 55 wasatiyya intellectuals, 105 – 6, 108, 110 wasatiyya trend, 101 Washington Post, 126 Weber, Cynthia, 184 – 5, 186, 188, 189, 190, 193 Western discourses, 120, 123– 7 ideology, 12, 18 interventions, 82 – 8 leaders, 1 media, 1, 7, 29, 121 –2, 125, 141 – 2 responses, 4, 143 Western powers Arab uprisings, 89 defined, 120 democracy, 118 Global South, 127 responses to uprisings, 189 role, 88 Rwanda, 87, 91 secularism, 124 unsafe citizens, 196–7 Whooley, Jonathan, 118– 19, 121– 2, 123 “Why Do They Hate Us?”, 127– 8 Wickham, Carrie, 101– 2

ARAB UPRISINGS

WikiLeaks, 212– 13, 215 Winegar, Jessica American Ethnologist, 154 women attacks, 133 causes of oppression, 124 democracy, 119, 120– 3 Muslim women, 118 protestors, 123, 125 representation, 127 Syrian uprising, 176 women’s rights Arab uprisings, 117 civilization, 126 defined, 120 democracy, 7, 121 emancipation, 5 importance, 118 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 128, 135 Sankara, Thomas (1949 – 1987), 149 secularism, 122 – 3 Western discourse, 120 World Bank, 86, 150 Ya Haif (What a Shame), 176 Yemen Arab uprisings, 49, 51 civil wars, 207 democracy, 63 drones, 76 al-hirak, 163 human rights, 60 media coverage, 50, 56 United States of America (USA), 26 US allies, 56 US priorities, 54t1 Western powers, 89 YouTube, 214, 216 Zongo, Justin, 141, 151