Arab Spring Update: Part 1

On December 17, 2010, a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest. Four weeks later, Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was gone. Protests spread to Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. Some successfully ousted their autocratic leaders, some were brutally repressed, and others are ongoing. In almost all cases, the final outcome is still up in the air. More than one year on, how have the countries of the Arab Spring fared?

Tunisia

Change in rank in the Economist's Democracy Index: ↑ 53

On October 23, 90% of registered Tunisian voters elected members of the Constituent Assembly, tasked with drafting a constitution and forming an interim government. The moderate, Islamic Ennahda ("Renaissance") Party won a plurality (89 out of 217) of seats and formed a coalition with the center-left Congress for the Republic (CPR) and Ettakatol Parties. On December 10, the Assembly adopted a provisional "mini-constitution" that establishes the framework for the interim government until a permanent constitution is adopted. Ennahda's Hamadi Jebali was chosen as the interim government's prime minister. Jebali appointed a new government and took office on December 24.

Though Ennahda is an Islamic party, there is little worry of it turning Tunisia into a fundamentalist state and rightly so. Ennahda's representatives have advocated a government based on the "Turkish model," i.e. a secular republic with a combination of Islamic and secular parties. Its platform called for gender pay equality. And it will be counterbalanced by liberal, secular parties both in its coalition and opposition.

The real issue is that the government is not moving fast enough to combat the economic issues that triggered the revolution in the first place. (Though Tunisians are highly educated, Tunisia's per-capita GDP is only $9,557.) According to activist Lina Ben Mhenni, the

people, now in power, have ignored the real problems of Tunisian citizens—the problems that drove people to the streets last year. Instead of addressing them, as they promised in their campaigns, they are trying to divert our attention to those issues of religion and identity. And, unable to keep their promises, they have started to use violence against the people who continue to demonstrate. In recent weeks, at least five people have set themselves on fire.

Protesters gathered in Tahrir Square four days ago with some commemorating the anniversary of the revolution and others calling for a renewal in revolutionary zeal.

Egypt

Change in rank in the Economist's Democracy Index: ↑ 23

The Arab Spring came to Egypt on January 25, as tens of thousands poured into Tahrir Square. Those numbers swelled, and Hosni Mubarak resigned on February 11, devolving power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) under Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi. Protests continued with demands ranging from speeding up reforms, postponing elections, and bringing Mubarak and others to trial. SCAF continued to use the emergency powers used by Mubarak, trying civilians in speedy military courts.

Elections for the People's Assembly--the Egyptian Parliament's lower house--were confusingly complex and held in waves from November through January. As in Tunisia, Islamists, in this case the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, won a plurality of seats due to their organization and their history of opposing the regime. The Assembly was sworn in on January 23, and the SCAF delegated legislative power to it. SCAF also announced a partial lifting of the state of emergency in place essentially since 1967. (In a statement, Tantawi said that emergency powers still applied in cases of "thuggery," which may render this statement hollow.) However, SCAF is still running the show in Cairo and has reserved 10 seats for itself in the Assembly.

Elections for the Shura Council (the upper house of Parliament) are ongoing and presidential elections are set to take place by June 30, after which SCAF will hand over power. Turnout for the Shura Council elections, unlike those for the Assembly, was low, as Egyptians are frustrated with the lack of progress. Both houses of Parliament will be responsible for creating an 100-member assembly tasked with drafting a constitution.

As it stands, there is a three-way contest for power between the armed forces, Islamists, and secular liberals. None of the sides are completely unified; indeed, there are over 100 political parties in Egypt today. There is a widespread opinion among the Egyptian people that the Muslim Brotherhood has made or will make a backroom deal with SCAF. More likely, in my opinion, is that the Brotherhood is trying not to alarm them in order to avoid an Algeria-style coup.

As in Tunisia, we should not worry that the Islamist FJP holds a plurality of seats. Though FJP's Saad al-Katatni is the Assembly's speaker, one of the deputy speakers comes from the Wafd Party (to Katatni's left) and the other comes from the Salafist Party (to his right). Like Tunisia's Ennahda, FJP has taken moderate stances in public and is rightly focusing on Egypt's economic problems. Egypt has been hit hard by inflation and a decline in tourism.

Tunisia and Egypt have arguably been the most successful in democratizing in the wake of the Arab Spring. Though the autocrats are gone, the revolution is not over, as the two nations wrestle with forming a new constitution, a new government, and new democratic institutions.

Read Part Two on Libya & Bahrain and Part Three on Yemen.

Some Good News from South Asia

First, a major milestone in polio eradication has been reached in India; the country has gone a full year without a reported case of the disease. The Indian government worked closely with local religious leaders to spread the message and increase cultural acceptance of vaccination. The World Health Organization and Sabin Vaccine Institute are hopeful this strategy can be copied in central Asia and in west and central Africa, where polio is still endemic.

But perhaps the even bigger story is the continuing democratic reforms in Burma. The reforms began after elections in 2010. Though there were widespread charges of fraud and the election was boycotted by Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), Burma's military junta ceded some of its power to the new Parliament.

Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest in November 2010 and is running for Parliament in upcoming elections. Laws censoring the press have been relaxed and websites like Youtube have been unblocked. Construction of the controversial Myitsone Dam in northern Burma, which would endanger the Kachin people's cultural identity and (seeing as it's located near a major fault line) their lives, has been suspended. The government has signed a cease-fire with Karen insurgents in the east. Political prisoners, including student protesters from 1988 and Buddhist monks from 2007's "saffron revolution," have been released in two batches, first in September 2011 and then again this month.

The U.S. has been engaging with the Burmese government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the country after the first batch of political prisoners was released. After the second, the U.S. announced that it would exchange ambassadors with Burma for the first time since 1990. The Obama Administration should be lauded for how they have handled the situation, though reforms have resulted more from conditions on the ground than diplomatic engagement.

So why has the Burmese government started these reforms? Partly there is a desire to ease Western sanctions, which have restricted travel of prominent members of the regime, frozen their assets, and limited foreign investment in the country. More importantly, argues Marie Lall of the University of London, is the government's desire to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2014 and for greater economic integration with the rest of the ASEAN community.

Whatever the reason, let's hope that Burma continues down the path of democratic reform.

A Separation can Bring Us Together

"We can never say or tell others how to look at Iranian people, or vice versa.  These movies are just positive tools that would simply help the understanding of one another, especially these days." 

- Peyman Moadi, lead actor

"It makes me so happy to have people see their real selves through such positive representations." 

- Asghar Farhadi, writer and director

A Separation (جدایی نادر از سیمسن), a film about a couple at a crossroads, has already won Golden and Silver Berlin Bear awards, a Critics Choice award, a Chicago Film Critics Association award, the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and now makes history as the first foreign film to win the Los Angeles Film Critics award for Best Screenplay.  With so much hype, the film might even be an Academy Award nominee. Fingers crossed!

This all comes at a moment when tensions between Iran and the United States continue to escalate to a worrisome degree (especially in light of the tensions in the Straits of Hormuz, increasingly repressive sanctions, human rights concerns, and assassinations, both plotted and actuated).  However, Iranians export  good cinema.  Iranian films are nothing new to international film festivals, Jafar Panahi is a world-renowned director, and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (the book and film) is a household title.  

But, the vast majority of Americans with whom I have interacted know very little about modern Iran (or Ancient Iran for that matter - no, 300 doesn't count) and its diverse peoples, cultures, and politics.  There is also a tendency in the United States to otherize minority groups and, relevant here, peoples from the Middle East in a way that distorts  the actual reality of these places and people (personal hero Edward Said can break it down for you, if you don't already know).  

Hopefully, the positive attention generated by Farhadi's A Separation will provide an opportunity for people around the world to see Iranians speaking by and for themselves through their own lenses and will create a much-needed opportunity to learn and understand one another as human beings.