Arab Spring turns to winter
It was two years ago this month that a young Tunisian vendor set himself on fire to protest the petty harassment from local police and officials, who for years had made it difficult for him to earn a living.
Mohamed Bouazizi, then 26 years old and from the small town of Sidi Bouzid, had for years supported his mother and siblings by selling produce as a street vendor. According to reports at the time, and also a later investigation, Bouazizi, who had regularly faced harassment and demands for bribes from local police, had his produce (for which he had borrowed money the night before) and weigh scales confiscated by local police.
Bouazizi went to the local governor’s office later that day to complain about his treatment, and to demand his goods back. When he was refused a meeting, he lit himself on fire and died in early January.
Bouazizi’s death turned out to be the spark that lit up active unrest to authoritarian regimes across the Arab world, including not only Tunisia (where the authoritarian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, soon fled) but also Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Syria, among others.
Two years on, those who participated in such uprisings must wonder if much progress has been made. Syria is in the midst of its deadly civil war, Libya is still fractured and Tunisia’s economy is weaker now than two years ago, with unemployment at 18 per cent — up from 13 per cent.
Most worryingly, the hope that at least some Arab protesters and reformers had are being dashed by increasingly muscular Islamic fundamentalists in the region whose political power, now reinforced by the ballot box in some cases, is on the rise.
Egypt is not the only country to worry about in this regard, but it is the canary in the political coal mine. Since Egypt’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel under then-president Anwar Sadat, the country has, until the Arab Spring, been a bulwark of stability in a volatile region. Problematically, its last president, the now deposed Hosni Mubarak, who had run the country since Sadat’s assassination by Islamic radicals in 1981, was corrupt and authoritarian.
Thus, as with other rulers in the region, Mubarak was understandably opposed by those who thought benign democracy would replace authoritarianism.
Tragically, such optimism appears not to have been borne out. Egypt’s new fundamentalist president, Mohammed Morsi, issued a decree late last month that arrogated as much power to him as Mubarak before him. He later rescinded those powers after his move caused huge protests, but he remains determined to hurry his constitutional reforms through in a referendum set for Saturday. Those reforms will turn back the clock and introduce creeping Islamic theocracy into Egypt, and they are likely to be voted in, given that 90 per cent of the more than 80 million Egyptians are Sunni Muslims with a conservative bent.
This is extremely worrying. In October, Morsi joined in prayers for the destruction of “Jews and their supporters.”
Also, Egypt’s Christians, which make up 10 per cent of the population, and liberals have been under constant pressure and attack, as the Muslim Brotherhood government and its militias are actively repressing both.
It is a tragedy that the Arab Spring looks to have turned into an excuse for new tyrants to introduce a new “winter” and repress minorities in the region.