The Middle East Up-rising & Repercussions Chapter 6 = International reactions International reactions to the 2011 Egyptian revolution, International reactions to the 2011 Libyan civil war, and International reactions to the 2011 Syrian uprising Harsh government responses to protests in many Arab countries have met international condemnation. However, there have been some notable exceptions. France, the former colonial ruler of Tunisia, refused to denounce President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s attempt to disperse demonstrators in his country by force in January 2011 prior to the Tunisian revolution; Foreign Affairs Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said the French “must not stand out as lesson-givers” in Tunisia, while the French minister for agriculture defended Ben Ali, saying, “President Ben Ali is someone who’s frequently judged badly, [but] he’s done a lot of things.” The French government later took a leading role in supporting the opposition to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya, forming a tripartite alliance with the United Kingdom and Lebanon on the United Nations Security Council to successfully lobby for international military intervention, though it was Peru that was the first country to sever bilateral relations with the government in Tripoli over the crackdown on Libyan protesters in February 2011 The government of Iran condemned the Egyptian government’s response to protests[417] and was harshly critical of the Bahraini monarchy’s reaction to the Shia-led demonstrations in the Gulf archipelago but has virtually ignored President Bashar al-Assad’s violent suppression of protests during the uprising in Syria and according to the U.S. government, has possibly provided aid to suppressing the protests Conversely, while Qatar staked out its place as a primary backer of the attempted revolution against Gaddafi and a “key ally” of the partially recognized National Transitional Council, the provisional government of the self-declared Libyan Republic, it steadfastly supported the supranational Gulf Co-operation Council in its military intervention to quell protests in neighboring Bahrain, contributing troops to the Peninsula Shield Force mission there. The government of Morocco received praise from the U.S. government for its response to major protests despite numerous deaths there as well as in protests in the Moroccan-administered “Southern Provinces” in Western Sahara, though the U.S. condemned the governments of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen for their actions in dealing with demonstrators. However, it has stopped short of calling for regime change in Bahrain alone among those states World economy As many of the world’s major oil producing countries are in the Middle East, the unrest has caused a rise in oil prices, causing the 2011 energy crisis. The International Monetary Fund accordingly revised its forecast for 2011 oil prices to reflect a higher price, and also reported that food prices could also increase Additionally, concerns about Egypt’s Suez Canal have raised shipping and oil prices. The World Bank’s June 2011 Global Economic Prospects report estimates that the turmoil may reduce growth in the region by 1 percent or more, with countries such as Egypt and Tunisia registering growth rates 3 or more percentage points lower than what they would have been in the absence of the crisis. Overall GDP in Egypt is projected to rise 1.0 percent in 2011 (click here for a regional forecast summary and here for individual country forecasts). Media coverage Al Jazeera won praise for its coverage of the protests, angering several governments. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked, “Al Jazeera has been the leader in that they are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective”. She also stated that “viewer ship of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials... The use of social media has been extensive. As one Egyptian activist tweeted during the protests, “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world” Internet censorship has also been a factor, and entire nation states were taken almost completely offline. In an attempt to quantify the likelihood of regime change in Arab World countries following the protests, The Economist Intelligence Unit created its “Shoe-Thrower’s index”. The name is derived from shoeing: throwing shoes, showing the sole of one’s shoe, or using shoes to insult, all of which are forms of protest primarily associated with the Arab world. According to their index, Yemen has the highest likelihood of a revolution, whereas Qatar has the lowest. The index factors in the number of years the current ruler has been in power, the percentage of the population consisting of young people, per capita GDP, democracy index, political corruption, and freedom of the press. BBC News used its own “Unrest Index” in its analysis of the protests. Alen Mattich of the Wall Street Journal created the “Revolting Index” to rate the likelihood of revolts by nation based on “social unfairness, propensity to revolt, and a trigger”. Mattich readily admits, however, that “the methodology is crude. There’s been no econometric work done”. The index listed a number of African nations towards the top of the list as well as some Asian nations. Criticism of international reactions Some scholars and pundits, including Slavoj Žižek and Robert Fisk, have argued that the range of international reactions to the various protests, uprisings, and revolutions associated with the Arab Spring demonstrate hypocrisy on the part of governments in the Western world and elsewhere. Žižek charged that the “western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism” When asked if he considered Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to be an “authoritarian ruler” prior to the popular movement that ousted him from power, U.S. President Barack Obama replied that he tends “not to use labels for folks”, called him a “stalwart ally in many respects to the United States”, and claimed that Mubarak “has been a force for stability and good in the region”. Australian journalist and acclaimed documentary maker John Pilger called U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s condemnation of “governments that arrested protestors and crushed free expression” a “spectacular hypocrisy” as she failed to mention that “her government was planning to close down those parts of the internet that encouraged dissent and truth-telling”. During international operations in Libya, Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn called NATO’s concern for Libyans “deeply hypocritical ... when they ignore or promote savage repression in Bahrain”. Veteran British journalist Robert Fisk also condemned the relative lack of concern on the part of Western leaders over the security crackdown in Bahrain. American journalist Jeremy Scahill observed that “the day before US missiles began raining down on Libya, security forces under the control of Yemen’s US-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, massacred more than fifty people who were participating in an overwhelmingly peaceful protest”. The Obama administration has since called for Saleh to hand over power to his vice president and commit to a transition to plural democracy for Yemen, but its comparative sluggishness in supporting the Yemeni protest movement versus its swift backing of Libyan protesters and rebel fighters faced some criticism American academic and investigative journalist Nir Rosen also criticized the U.S. government for more than doubling military assistance to Yemen between 2009 and 2010 After British Foreign Secretary William Hague called for affected governments to refrain from using force against protesters, and also for greater democratic reforms in the region on 12 February 2011, American philosopher and counterculture commentator Noam Chomsky claimed, “The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. The reason is very simple. Across the region, an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests” 21 February 2011, UK Prime Minister David Cameron became the first world leader to visit Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster 10 days prior. A news blackout was lifted as the prime minister landed in Cairo for a five-hour stopover that was hastily added at the start of his planned tour of the Middle East. After David Cameron stated that “just because we can’t intervene everywhere, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t intervene somewhere”, British commentator Johann Hari argued, “While ‘we’ are intervening to cause horrific harm to civilians in much of the world, it’s plainly false to claim to be driven by a desire to prevent other people behaving very like us” Motivations Numerous factors have led to the protests, including issues such as dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption (demonstrated by Wikileaks diplomatic cables) economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the population Also, some attribute the 2009 Iranian protests as one of the reasons behind the Arab Uprising. The catalysts for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries have been the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in power for decades, insufficient transparency of its redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status quo. Increasing food prices and global famine rates have also been a significant factor, as they involve threats to food security worldwide and prices that approach levels of the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. Amnesty International singled out Wikileaks release of US diplomatic cables as a catalyst for the revolts In recent decades rising living standards and literacy rates, as well as the increased availability of higher education, have resulted in an improved human development index in the affected countries. The tension between rising aspirations and a lack of government reform may have been a contributing factor in all of the protests. Many of the internet-savvy youth of these countries have studied in the West, where autocrats and absolute monarchies are considered anachronisms. A university professor of Oman, Al-Najma Zidjaly referred to this upheaval as youthquake Tunisia and Egypt, the first to witness major uprisings, differ from other North African and Middle Eastern nations such as Algeria and Libya in that they lack significant oil revenue, and were thus unable to make concessions to calm the masses. Recent history The current wave of protests is not an entirely new phenomenon, resulting in part from the activities of dissident activists as well as members of a variety of social and union organizations who have been active for years in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and other countries in the area, as well as in the territory of Western Sahara Tunisia experienced a series of conflicts over the past three years, the most notable occurring in the mining area of Gafsa in 2008, where protests continued for many months. These protest included rallies, sit-ins, and strikes, during which there were two fatalities, an unspecified number of wounded, and dozens of arrests. The Egyptian labor movement had been strong for years, with more than 3,000 labor actions since 2004 One important demonstration was an attempted workers’ strike on 6 April 2008 at the state-run textile factories of al-Mahalla al-Kabra, just outside Cairo. The idea for this type of demonstration spread throughout the country, promoted by computer-literate working class youths and their supporters among middle-class college students. A Facebook page, set up to promote the strike, attracted tens of thousands of followers. The government mobilized to break the strike through infiltration and riot police, and while the regime was somewhat successful in forestalling a strike, dissidents formed the “April 6 Committee” of youths and labor activists, which became one of the major forces calling for the anti-Mubarak demonstration on 25 January in Tahrir Square In Algeria, discontent had been building for years over a number of issues. In February 2008, United States Ambassador Robert Ford wrote in a leaked diplomatic cable that Algeria is ‘unhappy’ with long-standing political alienation; that social discontent persisted throughout the country, with food strikes occurring almost every week; that there were demonstrations every day somewhere in the country; and that the Algerian government was corrupt and fragile. Some have claimed that during 2010 there were as many as ‘9,700 riots and unrests’ throughout the country. Many protests focused on issues such as education and health care, while others cited rampant corruption. In Western Sahara, the Gdeim Izik protest camp was erected 12 km south-east of El Aaiún by a group of young Sahrawis on 9 October 2010, starting fall protests in the divided territory. Their intention was to demonstrate against labor discrimination, unemployment, looting of resources, and human rights abuses. The camp contained between 12,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, but on 8 November 2010 it was destroyed and its inhabitants evicted by Moroccan security forces. The security forces faced strong opposition from some young Sahrawi civilians, and rioting soon spread to El Aaiún and other towns within the territory, resulting in an unknown number of injuries and deaths. Violence against Sahrawis in the aftermath of the protests was cited as a reason for renewed protests months later, after the start of the Arab Spring The catalyst for the current escalation of protests was the self-immolation of individuals such as Mohamed Bouazizi, which brought together various groups dissatisfied with the existing system, including many unemployed, political and human rights activists, labor, trade unionists, students, professors, lawyers, and others. These groups have become an unprecedented movement that has built sufficient momentum to engender the current scope of events.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 03:32:48 +0000
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