A few days ago, the Cairo Criminal Court acquitted Egypt’s former
President Hosni Mubarak and his top security aides on charges of killing
hundreds of protesters during the January 2011 uprising. Yet four years ago,
the revolutionary youth had focused in their quest for freedom on deposing the
octogenarian leader who had ruled, and misruled, the country for 30 years. Soon
after Mubarak’s ouster they started questioning whether the real stumbling
block to freedom was a man, or a system. Now, as they lament the death of their
stolen revolution, they realize they have been facing an entire regime all
along, not a single man.
Emphasizing the wide-reaching influence leaders have over their
institutions, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "an institution is the
lengthened shadow of a single man." This is a plausible argument. However,
influence also moves in the opposite direction, from bottom to top, doesn’t it?
Or to put it differently, who exerts more influence over whom: the man or the
institution? In politics, for example, can a single man, in or out of office, change
or restructure a deep-rooted regime that is heavily guarded by vested interests
and an abundance of guns, resources and microphones? Or does the system inevitably
prevail, forcing the men on top to conform to its ways and doctrine?
Arabs narrate their history in terms of men, not ideas. In their tales, anecdotes
and myths, they tend to focus on people, searching for heroes—men of courage, nobility
and charisma—or, if necessary, inventing and then glorifying them. But the
complex, modern systems of rule are so powerful and overwhelming that in the
corridors and vestibules of the state machinery, Arab officials melt into the
structure of the state, losing their idiosyncrasies and taking special pride in
becoming the system's most ardent guardians. They become toxified; they and the
state become one and the same. Take Bashar-Al-Assad. A few months after the
Western-educated oculist succeeded his father in 2000, the Washington Report
on Middle East Affairs called him a "modern-day Ataturk" who was implementing
a "cultural revolution" in Syria, and the New York Times
depicted him as a "shy young doctor." A decade in power, and the
'shy' Al-Assad turned into a bellicose, brutish dictator of a rare kind.
Indeed, in the land of Arabs, it was the system that subdued the man—all
men, friends and foes alike. There has been no towering figure like Gorbachev or
Mandela in the modern history of the Arab world. Even the petty reformers,
insiders who at a certain moment in time believed in a limited, piecemeal
approach to reform, were soon sidelined or swallowed by the vortex of the state
machine. The Arab state has been like a revolving door; the faces at the apex
of power changed frequently, but the entrenched systems beneath did not.
Despite its drastic failures in economy and development, this Draconian state
has stayed intact over the years, exhibiting its willingness and capability to
travel any distance and to incur any cost in order to uphold its prerogatives
and keep democracy at bay.
It’s understandable. For one thing, power in authoritarian states is both
seductive and addictive. Writing about the effects of power, a former Egyptian
politician, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, said: "To me, it [authority] became
like drugs…It has a special taste; it resembles alcoholic drinks, with a 50
percent alcohol that scorches the throat." For another, the Arab state has
put down the roots of a potent, gigantic patronage network that is sustained by
an army of clients, beneficiaries, agents, intermediaries and dependants. These
have been the soldiers of the system. With the top-down movement of resources,
and the bottom-up submission of loyalty, the system endured against all odds.
The extraordinary resilience of the Arab state has propelled scholars of
democratic transformation to examine the region's "exceptional"
character: its immunity to democratic governance, its long-lasting marriage to
authoritarianism and banditry. There certainly came glimmering moments for
reform, brought about by the interplay of powerful internal and external pressures.
Yet, the Arab state shrewdly adapted to such incidents, offering a generous package
of concessions and promises, only to quickly pounce on its rivals, thwart the
offense, repair the rupture and return to where it had always been, dominant
and unreformed.
Egypt’s Tahrir Moment
Among Arab states, the modern Egyptian state provides the best example
of this resilience. Established after the 1952 coup of the Free Officers, this
state seemed for decades both metaphysical and invincible. It is not only a "deep
state" (a term originally used to describe the statist, anti-democracy
forces in Turkey's political system), it is also wide and resilient. A huge
edifice built over the years with arms stretching in all directions like a
giant octopus, the state in Egypt presides over a vast network of entrenched
interests and deep-rooted loyalties, and it owns a massive arsenal of guns. This
state is made up of a bloated bureaucracy, a sizeable military that controls an
economic empire, and in recent decades, it has been allied to the segments of
the business class whose economic interests are closely tied to, and dependent
on, state institutions. Yet this state had begotten poverty and injustice. And
by the beginning of the 21st century, it seemed that its days are
numbered.
Without a doubt, the biggest opportunity to dismantle Egypt's
authoritarian state and build another, more consonant with modern times, came
in early 2011. During the momentous 18-day uprising, protestors not only clamored
for Mubarak's removal, but also, with unbounded optimism, for the downfall of
the entire regime. And Mubarak stepped down. But his state—represented by the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF)—was given the mandate to oversee the
transition period to democratic rule. It soon became clear that this was merely
a leadership reshuffle. And in truth, the system jettisoned Mubarak not to
uproot the regime but to protect it.
Mubarak's resignation put Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's
faithful defense minister, in the driver's seat. Like most Arab World autocrats,
Mubarak had planted his loyalists in key institutions. And the more docile they
were, the longer they stayed in their positions — Tantawi was defense minister
for 20 whole years. This colorless, taciturn military bureaucrat, raised in the
womb of the state, was faithful to his superiors to the point of
self-effacement and fundamentally opposed to change. But the threat posed by
the uprising was massive, and Tantawi floundered.
Tantawi was 76 when the revolution broke out in January 2011, too old to
understand its underlying causes, too slow to respond to its rapid dynamics. To
be sure, the cloistered general felt no affinity with the revolution. He eyed
with suspicion, even hostility, the young revolutionaries who toppled his
patron and changed his world, but unlike other elements within the state
bureaucracy, he sensed that a new status quo had been born, and that there had
to be a new approach to governance. Egypt's political landscape had changed dramatically
after Mubarak's sudden ouster. Demonstrations took place every Friday in the
iconic Tahrir Square, a cascade of labor strikes swept industrial plants across
the country, and, perhaps more importantly, Mubarak, his sons and henchmen were
put on trial. The internal security institutions were melting down, which allowed
the revolutionaries, in a hitherto unthinkable move, to break into the
headquarters of the notorious State Security Intelligence, grabbing classified documents
as souvenirs and taking photographs of the personal belongings of Habib
Al-Adly, Egypt's ruthless pre-revolution Interior Minister.
Taken by surprise, and lacking skill and vision, Tantawi improvised. He
had no strategy or blueprint, but he had a sharp sense of threat. Accordingly
he felt the need to adapt to a perilously precarious period. Authoritarianism
was giving way to an era of electoral politics and freedom of assembly and
expression. Sitting astride internal and external pressure to reform, Tantawi
promised free elections and a return to the barracks, but he sought to retain
the privileges of the military in the new order. To the military, the
revolution was a test—a junction to be crossed, not a change of lanes. Concessions
had to be made, and they were.
After months of tiresome pushing and pulling with political forces, the
state grudgingly accepted that the moment of change had come. Tantawi believed Mubarak
had erred by planning to groom his son as his successor, and that his brand of intransigence
would not survive against the high tides of the Arab spring. So aside from
securing the interests of the military, Tantawi did not choose his successor.
The 2012 presidential election was free and fair, bringing to power the Islamist
leader Mohamed Morsi. Not only did Tantawi endorse the election results, he
also agreed to serve as defense minister to the new president—the newcomer to
the system from the the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the regime’s arch-enemy.
In power, the MB failed drastically, playing into the hands of the state
that was girding for battle. In the months from July 2012 to June 2013, as the
mismanagement and opportunism of the MB became apparent, the state got what it
sought, a casus belli, the justification of a war that only needed a catalyst.
The mass demonstrations on June 30, 2013 emboldened the state to recover lost
territory. While in 2011 the military had the patience of a saint, waiting for
18 turbulent days before eventually forcing Mubarak to leave, in 2013 it quickly
ran out of patience. One day after the huge protests, the military issued an
ultimatum, and two days later, Morsi was ousted and arrested.
The coup put paid to the age of revolution and street politics, inviting
back the pre-2011 practices and mentalities. So the period from 2011 to 2013
seems like a parenthesis between two remarkably similar eras. The system has
prevailed over the biggest threat it has faced since 1952, capitalizing on
popular anti-MB hysteria to retain its dominion and dodge reform, and cutting
the tongues of critics in the name of restoring "the prestige of the state."
The agents and allies of the state believe that it has to be fearsome once
again. With the unprecedented levels of coercion it has employed since Morsi's
ouster (killing thousands and arresting more than 40,000 in less than a year),
the state now seem invincible, even metaphysical. And Egypt is back to square
one.
Algeria: From Reform to Civil War
What happened in Egypt last year bears a striking resemblance to what
took place in Algeria two decades earlier. The road from revolution to
state-building and then state consolidation in Algeria was marred by corruption
and mismanagement. By the end of the 1980s, under the leadership of President Chadli
Bendjedid (ruled 1979-1992), the country had reached the brink of a crisis, the
worst since independence. Its youth, in despair about the country’s economic
and social situation, and indignant at the regime's corrupt nomenklatura, were boiling
with rage. They called the 1980s les années noires (the dark years). Then
in October 1988, they revolted.
The revolt was in one crucial aspect tantamount to the 2011 uprising in
Egypt—an unforeseen earthquake that throws the system off balance and persuades
the men in charge (or, to be accurate, some of them) that a change of sorts is
necessary to keep the system afloat. Bendjedid thought the state was ailing and
reform was needed. After riots that left hundreds dead, he sacked his prime
minister and promised "greater democratization of political action"
and "political and institutional changes." In early 1989, a new
constitution was drafted that introduced multiparty elections to Algeria's
political system for the first time since independence. A window of reform was left
slightly ajar, and dozens of newly-formed political parties passed through it.
The junta saw these measures more as a survival strategy than a
wholehearted approach to democratic rule. Naturally, generals profoundly accustomed
to a strict, chain-of-command culture do not have a penchant for the diversity,
competition and debate that democracy brings. When the Islamic Salvation Front
(FIS) won the municipal election in 1990, and the first round of the parliamentary
election in December 1991, sending shock waves through the system, the army
generals felt that the reforms were spinning out of control. The "deciders,"
who were ensconced behind the façade of a civilian leadership, intervened,
cancelling the election, sacking Bendjedid and thrusting a new president,
Mohamed Boudiaf, into office. But the new president was not as compliant as
they thought. He vowed to combat corruption and target the "mafias"
of banditry that had plundered the nation. A former politician, Abdel-Hamid
Brahimi, admitted in a moment of frankness that "the equivalent of the
country's foreign debt ($26 billion) was paid in bribes to government officials
over a decade”, words which quickly became an adage in Algeria. Boudiaf's declarations,
real or feigned, reassured Algerians that he would undermine the networks of
patronage and enrichment that had become so enmeshed in the fabric of the state.
A few months later, he was assassinated, allegedly by the military.
Clearly, the state was unable to tolerate the reformers, even petty ones
aspiring to modest change. With the elimination of two presidents inclined toward
reform, the hardliners in the military took full control. The maximum scale of
the state's violence was unleashed, no longer to be used only when necessary,
but whenever possible. The reign of terror of the 1990s, les années rouges,
harvested hundreds of thousands of lives. Algerians bitterly mocked that the
struggle for independence had made Algeria "the land of one million shaheed
(martyr)" but civil war turned it into "the land of one million zabeeh
(slaughtered)." Reform was indefinitely postponed, even after the guns
fell silent. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who became president with the blessings of
the army at the end of the civil war in 1999, still maintains a tight grip on
power. Last April, the 77-year old, wheelchair-bound leader started a new term
in office. The images of Bouteflika's pale face at the poll station epitomize
where his country stands today: behind a veneer of democracy, it is sick and still
unwilling to reform.
The story of systems overcoming reformists is one that repeats itself
tediously in other parts of the Arab world. In Sudan, for instance, there is the
case of General Abdel-Rahman Swar Al-Dahab, the defense minister who in 1985
toppled Sudan's president Gaafar Nimeiry in the wake of a popular uprising.
Nimeiry established a military dictatorship that lasted 16 years. Swar Al-Dahab
promised to hand power to an elected civilian government after a one-year
transition period, and kept his promise. In 1986, parliamentary elections were
held for the first time since 1968, bringing to power the leader of the
majority party. But once more this liberal experience was but a short interlude
between two dictatorships. In 1989, a military coup led by Colonel Omar Al-Bashir
again threw Sudan into the abyss of military rule. Déjà vu. And despite the
genocide in Darfur, secession of South Sudan, and Al-Bashir's own indictment by
the International Criminal Court for committing crimes against humanity, the
Sudanese president is still holding onto power, becoming the 12th
longest-ruling leader in the world.
***
If we think of the Arab spring as a prolonged sociohistorical process
carried out over multiple layers of time and space, then it is fair to say that
its ultimate fate is still unknown. The regimes of Egypt, Syria, Bahrain and
Yemen have obviously survived the Spring's first offenses. Other Arab states
are still governed by an unbroken chain of autocrats. If anything, the Arab
spring has told us that change does not come from above. The men of the system have
no appetite for change no matter how awash in corruption and ineptitude the
state is; and if they do, the system has the capacity to oust them at once. Egypt
is therefore standing in the streets of continuity, not at the gates of change.
Al-Sisi, after all, is the offspring of Mubarak; preserving the state is his
leitmotiv. To expect him to reform is to ask him to betray the institution to
which he belongs, and in which he spent 45 years of his life. In a speech he
gave last June, Al-Sisi clearly said that "state institutions shouldn’t be
touched, and nobody should comment on their performance."
The massive changes in Arab societies notwithstanding, the Arab state
remains curiously unchanged: Egypt has smoothly reverted to the notorious ethos
of the Mubarak years; the sheikhs of Gulf states use petrodollars to sustain
the rule of their tribes-with-flags brand of states; and a tyrant like Al-Assad
starts a new term in office as his torn country turns into a mass grave. Perhaps
the ink spilled in the Arab world on the popular "great man theory" should
instead have gone to write in length about the "great state theory"—the
dominant institution deserves the most thorough scrutiny.
Nael M. Shama
* This essay appeared first on the website
of Le Monde Diplomatique (English) on December 4, 2014.
