Coptic Christians rally in Egypt

The “Arab Spring” continues to be evoked continuously in the global media. The phenomenon, nearing a year old, has been instrumentalized as a way of commenting on disparate political issues. I have been consistently skeptical about this from the beginning – not the magnitude of the events or their potential to improve (or worsen) lives – but in the discourse that surrounds them. Briefly, I’ll recap those thoughts:

1. Social media as a force for social change has been overrated in this discussion, primarily because it’s the primary medium of the people creating the discussion. Like any other historical application of technology, social media is and (will increasingly) be used by both sides of a conflict. It is a tool, not a singular volitional creative entity. At present we lack the historical distance and perspective to assess its impact reliably.

2. The term “Arab Spring” is borderline insufferable. Much of the saga in the Middle East is taking place outside the Arabian Peninsula (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria) by people who are not ethnically identifiable as Arabs. This sloppy conflation has vaguely racist antecedents that I don’t want to overemphasize but which are clearly relevant. “Spring” is no better. As I wrote previously, it was chosen to mimic “Prague Spring,” Czechoslovakia’s unsuccessful late-1960s liberalization in defiance of Soviet power that was brutally suppressed.

3. Despite being discussed virtually in the past-tense, it is not yet apparent that the Arab Spring is a success in the way Westerners would like it to be. Revolutions take a long time to reach fruition; they create sociopolitical instability which is not easily stabilized. It is too early for serious people to have appraised them.

Recap aside, we have reached somewhat of a turning point in both the events on the ground and the discourse surrounding them that calls for deeper consideration. The killing of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and the holding of elections in Tunisia mark what are hopefully milestones in the freedom and prosperity in both states. (A wonkish analysis of the processes of the Arab Spring can be had here.) But the news isn’t all good and the ongoing discussion of it isn’t much better.

Some have decried the apparent summary execution of Qaddafi after he was captured alive, as well as the apparent execution of large numbers of loyalists as human rights violations. True enough, but the lack of “due process” in these matters is testament to the limited transferability of Western-style law and order to North Africa and/or the level of internecine feuding at the heart of Libya’s war which NATO has perceived as cleanly divided between an “isolated” Qaddafi and “the Libyan people.” Perhaps more troubling was the recent announcement of Libyan National Transitional Council interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil that the new Libya would be grounded in Islam’s Sharia Law and, accordingly, would tolerate polygamy and outlaw usury (the collection of financial interest). Let me be clear: there is nothing inherently wrong, as some would have you believe, with Sharia Law or the running of communities based on its principles. There are facets of it which are clearly antimodern, but the same is true of the Judeo-Christian law (in a looser sense) on which the ideals of Western democracy purport to be built. What is alarming here is the possibility that it could be used to enforce a more repressive society and a more economically backward state than the one it replaces, insofar as you think banning polygamy and interest as a financial tool are critical to modern life.

Meanwhile, Egypt, one of the earliest areas to attract significant attention in the “Arab Spring” may be backsliding rapidly. The country is still under the ostensibly temporary control of the Egyptian military, which many considered the best short-term bet for moderation and political impartiality in Egypt. Now, it seems the military regime is taking an active role in brutally suppressing Egypt’s millennia-old Coptic Christian community, which has been subjected to ongoing pogroms since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak and which represents an important moderate voice in Egyptian politics. This situation has been underreported in Western media, not least because it is highly worrying and inconvenient. Reports have suggested that others who escaped death have been subjected to torture and forced migration.

Talk is Cheap

Meanwhile, Westerners and especially Americans chatter happily away about the Arab Spring as if it were completed, positive, abstract concept suitably pliable for other political ends. The idiocy swings both ways. On the Right, there is talk that intervention has been proven successful at fairly low cost, even extending back to vindicate the Bush doctrine on transforming the Middle East. This is both a premature judgment and a false connection between Bush’s overwrought plans for intervention without development and Barack Obama’s underdeveloped non-strategy (or willfully occluded strategy, depending on how you spin it) of reacting to events noncommittally and imbuing them with meaning in retrospect.

On the Left, the burgeoning protest movements taking shape in global urban centers are expressing solidarity and continuity with the Arab Spring. The two movements are fundamentally different and struggle to endure even meaningful comparison. One is responding the denial of basic human rights, the other is reviving class war to denounce policies that reinforce the shortcomings of modern finance in immoral ways. If the “Occupy” protesters think college loan debt is bad, they should book a flight to Syria and try their hand at tweeting against the Assad regime.

Anyone making either of those arguments is either willfully deluded or purposely deceptive. We need to elevate our discussion about the social movements in the Middle East and North Africa. In what ways can or should the United States and others be involved there? Is it possible that our present policies are working against positive developments there? Given the possibility that things could turn out worse and not better, how do we plan for either outcome? How do we understand the hopeful development of democracy in these states with regard to the volatility of important regional players Iran (which is plotting to murder Saudi diplomats on our soil) and Saudi Arabia (which is undergoing uncertainty because its aged ruling oligarchy is dying off)? What of our impending withdrawal from Iraq and (wishfully) Afghanistan? How does our increasingly fraught relationship with Pakistan (who today announced it would side with Afghanistan in hypothetical war against the U.S.) affect our plans?

These are the questions we should be asking, not grasping for ways we can use the struggles of Middle Easterners and North Africans to reinforce our own political narratives. It’s still muddy season as far as the Arab Spring is concerned.