The success of mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt has opened the floodgates in the Arab world which has been misgoverned for decades. On Friday, protests continued in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Iraq. While demands vary from country to country, they can be classified into those connected to political reforms and to economic justice. There is a universal absence of fundamental rights in all these countries. Whatever media exists is under strict state control. The governments which have elected parliaments like Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, and Bahrain have ensured that these remain powerless. Opposition parties are practically banned, as is the case in Libya and Bahrain or are persecuted by the regimes in power. Libya where Col Qaddafi has ruled for 41 years has no constitution and allows no opposition inside the country with the result that dissidents have been forced to take refuge in other countries.
In the case of constitutional monarchies, as in Bahrain and Kuwait, the ruling family led by the King or Amir enjoys control over the levers of power and sources of income. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have a narrow sectarian policy that militates against the Shia population. Thus, the Shia population suffers from double persecution; one on account of the absence of democratic freedoms and the other from discrimination in opportunities, jobs and adequate representation in state forums on account of its beliefs.
With the outburst of information technology, most barriers created by governments to keep their populations in isolation have broken down. Celluar phones have played a revolutionary role in promoting instant contact between people without recourse to the state controlled telephony. Text messaging has provided activists a potent weapon-as it helps them hold flash protests at ever new locations, making crowd control difficult for the government. Facebook and Twitter have been increasingly used for the same purpose. Bloggers on the internet have kept the world constantly informed about the repression resorted to by the governments.
The present wave of protests has put Washingtons claims about support for human rights to test. Obama continued to waver over support to protestors in Egypt, patting Mubarak and his opponents alternately till it was clear the latter were the winning side. It is following a similar policy in the case of the government of Bahrain which hosts the US Navys Fifth Fleet and is another pillar of the American security structure in the Middle East. There is absolutely no paradigm shift in preferring stability guaranteed by despots over democracy and a free society.
Will the youth tire over time and accept the status quo as their forefathers did in the countries where the protests are taking place? This is what the rulers are depending on. However, such is the sense of deprivation in the new generation in some of these countries that even if the present upsurge is finally brought under control, more upheavals of the sort are likely to take place in days to come.
In most cases, the ongoing protests are for reforms and concessions and not for the overthrow of the political or economic system. The ruling elite is however so used to power and privilege that political reforms like empowered elected parliaments, free media and an independent judiciary look like a dream in the gulf kingdoms or under autocratic regimes in Yemen and Libya. The protestors suffer from the absence of popular political parties and recognised political leadership.
The struggle for political rights and economic justice will therefore have to be protracted. The present wave is merely the first phase of the struggle and could dissipate without getting most of the demands fulfilled. It has however provided enough confidence to the people who in most cases had never before seen an uprising of the type questioning the regimes right to rule. What is more, the protestors have now gained the much needed experience to organise people. The next wave of protests is therefore likely to be more formidable and the task of suppressing it much more difficult.
The task before the protestors is much more complex in countries where the rulers have a bigoted religious and sectarian mindset and are not willing to give equal rights and privileges to those subscribing to a denomination differently from theirs. In Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait, the issue would continue to simmer and act as a destabilising factor. The only way out for these states as well as for the Shia majority Iran and Iraq, is a secular system of governance.
The US strategic goals stand in the way of democratic changes and a secular policy in the client states of the Gulf. Like his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat, President Obama has followed the policy of letting the autocrats and Sheikhs rule as they please as long as the population is under control. Lectures on democracy are reserved only for regimes like Iran which do not follow the US diktat. There is little hope of any change in this permanent and bipartisan policy. Whatever change the people want will have to be the outcome of their own efforts.
The writer is a former academic and a political analyst.
