Taming The Arab Spring

By GÖKHAN BACIK
09 October 2011, Sunday
Courtesy Of "Today's Zaman"

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the ultimate mission of the Egyptian army is no longer the protection of the homeland. Instead, its new mission is taming the Arab Spring.

Many things have changed in Egypt so far: Hosni Mubarak is gone, and the people are free to organize protests on every street corner in Egypt. However, the essential elements of the old Egyptian regime are still there. The so-called Mubarak regime was a typical army-based system where the regime survived with the help and strong support of the civil and military bureaucracy. Real change in Egypt can happen only if a real transformation takes place in these civil and military cadres. Is it possible? Can the masses in the streets purge the old guys from their posts? Very difficult, if not totally impossible. As in Pakistan and Turkey, the Egyptian army is more than a bureaucratic unit. It is a kind of social class. What drives such armies is their set of corporate interests, not their constitutionally conferred roles. These armies do not necessarily carry out their duties according to the national interest. Often, they behave according to their corporate interests, be these financial or ideological. These armies have their own banks, insurance companies and factories. The Egyptian army operates luxury hotels and construction companies. Many factories owned by the army produce TV sets, kitchen appliances and various other civilian goods. It even owns an olive oil company. Experts, such as Paul Sullivan, argue that the army runs at least 10-15 percent of the Egyptian economy. Gen. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi's mission since the fall of Mubarak is to maintain this financial empire. But what is the strategy? Simple: Postpone everything for as long as you can. Postpone elections; postpone the drafting of the new constitution. … Meanwhile, make sure that the US and other Western states remain of the traditional opinion that the army, not the people, is vital to their interests. So far, Gen. Tantawi has been very successful in this mission: Senator John McCain has told CNN that “the good news is that the army is playing a very constructive role.” For McCain, the army is “the only real stabilizing force in the country right now.” It is sad to see that, decades on, many Americans still do not understand that armies cannot, by nature, be the drivers of democratization in the Middle East. Army-led democratization is another typical Western myth. In fact, its output is inevitably some form of authoritarianism. A confession of Condoleezza Rice was very candid on this point: “For 60 years the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.” The Obama administration should take note of this and immediately purge the idea of democratization-through-generals from US foreign policy. Indeed, it should purge the people in the American state machinery who still believe in the democracy-through-the-army model. The Egyptian generals know very well that, except for the people, there is no serious political group that can challenge their status. Thus, they will do their best to tame the Arab Spring, lest it wash away their privileges. The Muslim Brotherhood's priority is national and international recognition. Therefore, this group will be very diplomatic and refrain from clashing with the army. Worse, how the Muslim Brotherhood means to position itself politically is not clear. But it is clear that taming the Arab Spring requires domestic and international partners. So some domestic political groups, as well as some foreign powers such as the US, may offer help to the Egyptian army in its new mission of taming the Arab Spring. Last week, Gen. Tantawi said Egypt is going through a critical period in its history: “People, despite their different political and nonpolitical orientations, must realize the ramifications of what it takes to get off that rough road.” Not surprisingly, as a typical Middle Eastern general, he also complained that disagreements and mistrust have plagued Egypt since the uprising that ousted President Mubarak in February. Accordingly, what Egypt needs is order and unity, and it is only the army that can deliver that. Tantawi's dream of a “democracy” in which there are no disagreements is, of course, not a democracy. But Tantawi's determination should be read carefully by those who have cheered the Arab Spring with joyous enthusiasm. This single Egyptian case is enough to persuade us that we now need a more realistic analysis of Arab politics.