StephenKMackSD's Blog

In Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, published in 1966, an unnamed university graduate returns to his home country, Sudan, full of hope about the new era of independence in his country. But an old man from his ancestral village warns him: “Mark these words of mine, my son. Has not the country become independent? Have we not become free men in our own country? Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do.”

As Salih predicted, the regimes that have followed European occupation of the Arab world have consolidated power in the hands of a small elite, which was often beholden to foreign countries and bent on repressing the civil and human rights of its people. Over the last two generations, the majority of young Arabs have known only two or three heads of state, each brought to office thanks to heredity, coup d’état, or sham elections. This is why, reading about the events in Tunisia earlier this month, it seemed to me I was witnessing the first national uprising in the Arab world since independence.

And what joy it is to be alive at this moment! To see Ben Ali chased out of the country he led for 23 long years is to feel that nothing is impossible. While the rest of the world was busy trying to come up with a suitable name for this revolution, the Tunisian people coined a new verb: “se benaliser”, which means “to run away in fear”. It is certainly a lovelier coinage than the one they lived with for far too long: “se trabelsier,” which means, “to steal, in the manner of the Trabelsis”. (The Trabelsis are the widely despised family of Ben Ali’s wife, Leila Trabelsi.)

The aftershocks of the Tunisian uprising are beginning to be felt across the region, with a spate of self-immolations and street protests. The doyen of Arab dictators, Muammar Gaddafi, in power for 41 years, seems particularly worried, given his scolding of Tunisian protesters and his rush to stamp out protests in Libya over subsidised housing. The slogans used by protesters in Cairo and Alexandria demonstrate how much they have been inspired by their Tunisian brothers: “Mubarak, dégage!” (“Mubarak out!”) said one. And “Mubarak, Mubarak, Ben Ali welcomes you – the Jedda Hotel awaits you.”

Of course, protests in the Arab world are nothing new. The Arab dictators long ago learned how to muzzle the independent press, to stifle political opposition, to instil fear in their citizens and especially to let young people blow off a little steam every once in a while. But Tunisia demonstrated what hundreds of hypocritical lectures on democracy could not: even against such odds, change is possible. In that sense, it has transformed the Arab world.

Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-born writer and critic.

The tyrant exists only in the imagination of his subjects; the master resides only in the perception of the slave. Attempts at defiance have been abundant in the recent history of the Arabs, many of them in Palestine, but unlike those, the Tunisian example was successful: it widened people’s imagination, changed their perception, increased their self-confidence and showed them how fragile their tyrants are.

Revolutions travel, and in the Arab world they travel faster: after the first world war, a wave of revolutions swept through the region: Egypt in 1919, Iraq in 1920, Syria in 1925, a guerrilla war in Palestine from 1922-35 and a full-scale popular revolt from 1936-39. After the loss of Palestine to the Zionist movement in 1948, Arab leaders who were perceived to be incompetent and complicit were punished. This time there were political assassinations and military coups: 1949 Lebanon and Syria, 1951 Jordan, 1952 Egypt and 1958 Iraq. More recently, when the Lebanese resistance was able to defeat Israel and force it to withdraw under fire in May 2000, the second Palestinian intifada began a few months later. Despite the difference in performance, Gaza 2008 was a replay of Lebanon 2006. In both wars, Israel killed many civilians but was unable to achieve any of its political goals.

But Tunisia was a first in the Arab world, in that it was a non-violent, persistent and eventually successful people’s revolution against a native tyrant allied with the west. The other events were either directed against a colonial power or were military coups, leaving the Arab rulers and their colonial allies with the impression that occupation was immune to popular anger. It also was a first in that it showed how ordinary people can be quite good in the art of government. Street committees were formed to prevent looting, some cities formed their own governing bodies to fill the vacuum after the fall of the regime – such bodies were democratic in the rawest sense of the word, legitimate and efficient.

Now the wave is coming. I will venture to say that the Egyptian regime has already fallen: it might take some time, but the fear, the perception that the regime is invincible has gone once and for all. All this is followed quite closely in Palestine; any future intifada will not be directed only against the occupation, but also against any Palestinian entity that co-operates with the occupation. Tunisia sent out the message that client regimes fall – that if we can drive the empires out, we will surely be able to drive out their vassals.

As I write, demonstrations rage in the streets of Cairo: everyone knows that if they stay at home, they will be compromising the safety of those in the streets, as well as their own freedom. Cairo knows and Cairo moves. Ramallah worries that an empowered Cairo means an empowered Gaza, and Tel Aviv and Washington know that instead of just Iran, they will now have to worry about Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine all at once.

Tamim Al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet. He is currently a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

The Arab world has not been as stagnant nor as apathetic as is widely claimed. This week’s events in Egypt, while unusual in their scale, are a continuation of a movement that can be traced back through my whole lifetime: from anti-Gulf war protests in the early 90s to protests against IMF structural adjustments in the late 90s, to second intifada solidarity in 2001, massive anti-war protests in 2003, the pro-democracy Kefaya movement of 2004-06, wildcat strikes nationwide in 2006-08, the struggle for a minimum wage in 2008-09 and the anti-torture protests of 2010. The organisers and leaders have been active and involved for at least five to 10 years now.

However, the events in Tunisia not only injected a new hope and inspired tens of thousands of new protesters to participate, they spread the word “revolution”. Since the decline of the Kefaya movement – the unofficial name for the Egyptian Movement for Change – common wisdom dictated that activists should focus on economic issues, such as the minimum wage, and the daily humiliations faced by ordinary Egyptians, or on justice for victims of torture such as Khaled Said. So the organisers of the 25 January protest, while inspired by Tunisia, stuck to this formula, only to be overwhelmed by tens of thousands of previously unpoliticised people spontaneously chanting, “The people want the regime to go down” (or rather the people will bring down the regime) – a crude, very rhythmic and totally new slogan that emerged from the ranks of the uninitiated, not the experienced activists.

On Twitter Tunisians responded to news that Egyptian protesters had borrowed two lines from their national anthem by telling us how they sang revolutionary songs by the Egyptian leftist duo Sheikh Imam and Ahmad Fouad Negm. From the internet and satellite TV a new pan-Arabism is born: my generation was not brought up on Arabist propaganda as past generations were, yet in our attempts to revolt we automatically find solidarity. Gazans have been watching the events with even more enthusiasm than Egyptians, for our victory will have a big impact on them.

This is a reality born out of technology, geopolitics and shared circumstances, but it is also fragile. The internet also encourages sectarianism and consumerism; other identities are competing, such as the recent football wars between Egypt and Algeria. But thanks to Bouazizi, Sidi Bouzid and the Tunisian revolution, a pan-Arabism rooted in a quest for dignity and justice is now likely to dominate.

Alaa Abd El Fatah is a prominent Egyptian blogger.