Recently watched the documentary "The Inside Job", a chillingly effective and analytical look at the causes of the Financial Crisis. It is narrated by Matt Damon, who also acts as interviewer to those people of influence who were happy enough (or foolish enough) to want to be interviewed.
"The Inside Job" sets out in clear details the root causes for the Financial Crisis, and lays out in no uncertain terms essentially how amoral, all-powerful and corrupt the financial sector that controls the world's money truly is.
For those who think that to say "the banks and money men run everything" is a statement of a conspiracy-theorist, watching this film will show you how sadly correct much of that paranoia really is based on fact.
The Financial Crisis was not an accident. It was not inevitable.
It happened because thirty years ago the governments of the Anglo-Saxon world (Ronald Reagan in particular), threw away the rules that had protected the banking industry from carrying out the same amoral and reckless behaviour that had caused the Great Depression.
It happened because Ronald Reagan was a willing disciple to the views the the banking sector, who felt they had been constrained for too long by those same rules that had protected the economy from the irresponsibility of the banks.
In 1979, for example, the big banks of the USA (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs etc.) had a modest number of staff, on a modest wage. There was the example of one broker who actually had two jobs in order to make a suitable income for his wife and children. Due to the throwing out of the rules restricted the banks, ten years later that same broker would be a millionaire. Those banks now have a staff many times higher than they had thirty years ago.
But even that deregulation did not mean that banks could not be regulated in other ways. In the financial industry, there are what are called Ratings Agencies: these give values to the assets that banks have when trading. Attempts to regulate the banks in other ways during the Clinton administration fell on deaf ears, and by that point the banks had long had sufficient clout to arm-wrestle the Department of the Treasury to make it effectively a huge lobby for the banking sector.
The Ratings Agencies are a valuable tool to let other banks know how healthy the assets of other banks are. But by the start of the 21st century, banks were already paying bonuses to those employees in the Ratings Agencies who would give those banks the highest ratings. In other words, corruption and bribery.
These "bonuses" would soon come back to haunt the Ratings Agencies. Because by this point the ever expanding economy was being fuelled by speculation and a property bubble creating by those same all-powerful, un-regulated banks. Furthermore, due to the Ratings Agencies and deregulation, those banks could, by 2007, take out loans that were tens of times higher than the entire bank's actual value - in some cases, loans worth up to 30 times the bank's actual assets.
This massive overlending (called "leverage" in banker's jargon) was made possible by offering, for example, mortgages to those who weren't actually able to afford them. Because of the inherent risk of offering loans to such clients, the interest rates were higher. But the banks, blindly ignoring the obvious risks, saw only the high interest rates, so these types of "risky" but highly profitable loans because the norm in many cases.
The final thing to remember, piling risk upon risk, was that the banks were able to divide all these "risky" loans into one big bundle with other, safer, loans. This bundle was then divided into many segments, and each segment swapped with other investment banks for financial gain. The "reasoning" was that dividing up the "risky" loans with the safe loans, it would make it safer for everyone concerned. But if it came to a time when anyone wanted to know who held the "risky" loans, no-one would have any idea where they were. Perfect, eh?
So when the whole house of cards finally came crashing down in the autumn of 2008, all the major banks became effectively bankrupt due to their own recklessness and stupidity, as well as the immorality of the corrupt system of Ratings Agencies.
The goverments balied them out; they had to in order to prevent another Great Depression. The fact that the leading banks of the financial world, who were so all-powerful, could be so financially idiotic as to not understand that they had created a huge confidence trick on each other and the rest of the world, is breathtaking.
So you would think that the governments would see that deregulation doesn't work.
Some governments thought that; fewer of them actually did anything that would remotely prevent it from happening again.
The reason was simple: the leading governments of the world were getting their advice from the leading financial experts of the world. The leading financial experts were trained in the same theories that had created the mess; furthermore, many of them were bring paid by the same banks that had created the mess, to give their "advice" to the governments of the world.
The result is that the leading banks of the world, except for the brief period when they thought they would go bankrupt in September 2008, were not in favour of deregulation. And the problem wasn't just that the governments' advice was coming from academics who were already financially tied to those same banks.
The other problem was that, in the past thirty years since deregulation, the banks had not only become much bigger; they had also become far fewer in number. In other words, the banking sector was a kind of financial oligarchy. In the USA, there were effectively only four major banks in the country; others had either gone bankrupt or been bought out by others since 2008.
That was what created the term "Too Big To Fail". This helped the banks play on governments' fear of causing another, even deeper, crisis, and left the governments' mute in the face of the banks' demands for financial protection.
So what should have been a golden opportunity for goverment to right the wrongs of deregulation thirty years ago, turned into the banks' golden opportunity to cement their financial power over government. The banks did the crime; the government paid for the time. And now all government taxpayers are funding that "bail-out", through cuts to government services and tax rises. A bail-out, indeed: the biggest in history.
And what lesson have the banks learned from this disaster of their own making? That we can do no wrong. We are Gods.
I wonder what Ayn Rand would have thought of this.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Libya and the UN; resolution and intervention.
Now that the UN-backed resolution is being enforced onto the Libyan government, here would be a good time to reflect on the wider meaning and implications of what is happening in Libya under UN authority.
First of all, President Obama has made the obvious and wise decision of drawing lessons from both wars in Iraq. The USA's stance in the Libyan can be summarised as this: do it multilaterally; don't commit troops.
The reasons for this position are clear: learning the things that went right with the first war against Iraq (the UN-backed, international, Arab-supported, coalition to liberate Kuwait); and remembering the mistakes of the second (still unconcluded) Iraq war (the almost unilateral decision to invade Iraq with almost no legal basis or clear threat to other nations from Iraq). On the "don't commit troops" point, this is similar to President Clinton's war in Kosovo, which was done as mainly an air war with few troops involved on the US side. And after the mental scar that the second Iraq war still has on the Arab world, Obama is clearly minded to be seen NOT as an occupier, with American soldiers occupying the third Muslim country in ten years.
But there are also some wider, historic points to think about regarding the UN resolution against Libya. And this is about the history of previous conflicts over the past twenty years, and how they tie in with the UN and the international community.
The status of the UN resolution against Libya bears some similaritiries to the first Iraq war, and also the war in Kosovo, as I have mentioned. But there are important differences.
Today we have an Arab-backed, international coalition against the Libyan government, as existed against Saddam Hussein in 1991. The coalition against Saddam Hussein was created to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi forces; this resulted in many months of bombing before the actual invasion of ground forces took place.
In the war in Kosovo, President Clinton failed to get a UN resolution to legally back up the war to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Kosovars; therefore, he and NATO fought a war without UN backing. Perhaps later President Bush and Dick Cheney had this precedent at the back of their minds when they looked at the options for a second Iraq war.
What we have today in Libya is a UN-backed air war to effectively bring about a change of government in Libya; this is neither to drive out an occupying force (as in the first Iraq war), or to prevent ethnic cleansing and promote an independence movement (as in the Kosovo war).
The UN resolution against Libya is to prevent "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" such as the shelling of civilians; this sounds quite a lot like the reasons used to intervene in Bosnia (although this was also about massive ethnic cleansing too, like in the later Kosovo war). But there is no "ethnic cleansing" in Libya. It is, more or less, an irregular and bloody civil war; a power struggle between two sides, where the "normal" rules of war are thrown to one side for political reasons. And the UN has decided to back one side over the other.
In other words, from the history of UN international interventions in the past twenty years, there is almost no adequate precedent.
On the other hand, Muammar Gaddafi has plenty to be held account for.
For a start, as a clearly unstable, mentally-unhinged psychopath, he waged a war of terror against the USA in the 1980s. The Lockerbie bombing, and the bombing of a German nightclub frequented by American soldiers, were given the go-ahead under his watch.
There is the fact that during the same period, and before, he financed and supported various other terrorist groups around the world. For twenty years, he made Libya effectively a terrorist haven; in his own delusional mind, he saw himself as a kind of "anti-Westerm messiah".
There is the fact that as ruler of Libya, he managed to transform it into an Orwellian nightware (although there have been other dictators following this mould as well).
And there is the fact that when his population did start an uprising against his government last month, he brought in mercenaries from other African countries to terrorise and murder his own people, when his own army, presumably, did not have the stomach to do it themselves. By bringing in foreign fighters to fight (by which I mean, massacre) Libyan civilians, Gaddafi effectively made it an international affair.
So although this situation is unprecented, it is not entirely surprising that the international community saw fit to respond. But, this response would have almost certainly not happened without Arab support.
And the Arab support would not have happened if those Arab governments were not themselves concerned about appearing on the "right" side, to their own respective populations.
What has been called the "Arab Spring" of 2011 is the real game changer here. The Libyan uprising would not have happened without the Egyptian revolution; the Egyptian revolution would not have happened without the Tunisian revolution; the Tunisian revolution may not have happened without one poor fruit seller setting himself on fire in sheer desperation at his government in December 2010.
So the "Arab Spring" is the real reason that the UN passed this resolution, setting the precedent of an air war to support democratic forces against autocratic governments.
Let's cheer for the Arabs, then, who have made possible a UN resolution with potentially huge implications, if ever used as a precedent at a later date.
Though I'm not holding my breath; no wonder that the Chinese and Russians have been so wary of what this resolution might mean. That the UN now officially supports democracy, and is ready to takes sides to enforce it where necessary.
Gaddafi said recently that the UN's resolution was technically invalid as it went against the rules of the UN Charter: he meant the principle of not interfering into internal conflicts.
I suppose that, technically, he may have a point. But no one outside of Tripoli cares what he thinks any more. He IS crazy, after all...
First of all, President Obama has made the obvious and wise decision of drawing lessons from both wars in Iraq. The USA's stance in the Libyan can be summarised as this: do it multilaterally; don't commit troops.
The reasons for this position are clear: learning the things that went right with the first war against Iraq (the UN-backed, international, Arab-supported, coalition to liberate Kuwait); and remembering the mistakes of the second (still unconcluded) Iraq war (the almost unilateral decision to invade Iraq with almost no legal basis or clear threat to other nations from Iraq). On the "don't commit troops" point, this is similar to President Clinton's war in Kosovo, which was done as mainly an air war with few troops involved on the US side. And after the mental scar that the second Iraq war still has on the Arab world, Obama is clearly minded to be seen NOT as an occupier, with American soldiers occupying the third Muslim country in ten years.
But there are also some wider, historic points to think about regarding the UN resolution against Libya. And this is about the history of previous conflicts over the past twenty years, and how they tie in with the UN and the international community.
The status of the UN resolution against Libya bears some similaritiries to the first Iraq war, and also the war in Kosovo, as I have mentioned. But there are important differences.
Today we have an Arab-backed, international coalition against the Libyan government, as existed against Saddam Hussein in 1991. The coalition against Saddam Hussein was created to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi forces; this resulted in many months of bombing before the actual invasion of ground forces took place.
In the war in Kosovo, President Clinton failed to get a UN resolution to legally back up the war to prevent the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Kosovars; therefore, he and NATO fought a war without UN backing. Perhaps later President Bush and Dick Cheney had this precedent at the back of their minds when they looked at the options for a second Iraq war.
What we have today in Libya is a UN-backed air war to effectively bring about a change of government in Libya; this is neither to drive out an occupying force (as in the first Iraq war), or to prevent ethnic cleansing and promote an independence movement (as in the Kosovo war).
The UN resolution against Libya is to prevent "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes" such as the shelling of civilians; this sounds quite a lot like the reasons used to intervene in Bosnia (although this was also about massive ethnic cleansing too, like in the later Kosovo war). But there is no "ethnic cleansing" in Libya. It is, more or less, an irregular and bloody civil war; a power struggle between two sides, where the "normal" rules of war are thrown to one side for political reasons. And the UN has decided to back one side over the other.
In other words, from the history of UN international interventions in the past twenty years, there is almost no adequate precedent.
On the other hand, Muammar Gaddafi has plenty to be held account for.
For a start, as a clearly unstable, mentally-unhinged psychopath, he waged a war of terror against the USA in the 1980s. The Lockerbie bombing, and the bombing of a German nightclub frequented by American soldiers, were given the go-ahead under his watch.
There is the fact that during the same period, and before, he financed and supported various other terrorist groups around the world. For twenty years, he made Libya effectively a terrorist haven; in his own delusional mind, he saw himself as a kind of "anti-Westerm messiah".
There is the fact that as ruler of Libya, he managed to transform it into an Orwellian nightware (although there have been other dictators following this mould as well).
And there is the fact that when his population did start an uprising against his government last month, he brought in mercenaries from other African countries to terrorise and murder his own people, when his own army, presumably, did not have the stomach to do it themselves. By bringing in foreign fighters to fight (by which I mean, massacre) Libyan civilians, Gaddafi effectively made it an international affair.
So although this situation is unprecented, it is not entirely surprising that the international community saw fit to respond. But, this response would have almost certainly not happened without Arab support.
And the Arab support would not have happened if those Arab governments were not themselves concerned about appearing on the "right" side, to their own respective populations.
What has been called the "Arab Spring" of 2011 is the real game changer here. The Libyan uprising would not have happened without the Egyptian revolution; the Egyptian revolution would not have happened without the Tunisian revolution; the Tunisian revolution may not have happened without one poor fruit seller setting himself on fire in sheer desperation at his government in December 2010.
So the "Arab Spring" is the real reason that the UN passed this resolution, setting the precedent of an air war to support democratic forces against autocratic governments.
Let's cheer for the Arabs, then, who have made possible a UN resolution with potentially huge implications, if ever used as a precedent at a later date.
Though I'm not holding my breath; no wonder that the Chinese and Russians have been so wary of what this resolution might mean. That the UN now officially supports democracy, and is ready to takes sides to enforce it where necessary.
Gaddafi said recently that the UN's resolution was technically invalid as it went against the rules of the UN Charter: he meant the principle of not interfering into internal conflicts.
I suppose that, technically, he may have a point. But no one outside of Tripoli cares what he thinks any more. He IS crazy, after all...
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Comparing models of "Muslim Democracy": the Turkish and Egyptian experiences
Nowadays, two of the most populous Muslim nations in and around the Middle east are, or appear to be in the process of becoming, democracies in the general sense of the word: Turkey and Egypt respectively.
The Turkish experience is the one that many Egyptians have been claiming to act as their inspiration, but this is itself deserves more than a cursory look at the similarities and differences: both between it and Western democracies in general, as well as the social differences between it and Egypt.
Turkey may be the most obviously Muslim "democracy" in the world (except for Pakistan and Lebanon, who have their own problems), but even that label deserves some qualifications.
Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) as a secular state, from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. It was NOT, initially a democracy. Ataturk understood that full "democracy" would be difficult for Turks to deal with straightaway, so the party he founded, the CHP, ruled the country unopposed until 1950, from the foundation of the republic in 1923. Ataturk died in 1938. Multiparty elections in 1950 resulted in the CHP being defeated by another party, and was out of power for ten years.
But this is not the only issue. For "Turkey" to remain a stable state, issues such as obvious ethnic and religious divides had to be pasted over by the state: The country's biggest city, Istanbul, for example, had a huge population of Greeks, and there were also Greeks scattered all across the nation, in the west in particular. This issue was dealt with through mutual population exchanges with Greece (who had a large number of Turks in the east of their country). But there still remained large numbers of Greeks in Istanbul upto the 1950s; a controversial "pogrom" against the Greeks took place in that decade, that encouraged almost all the Greeks to leave. Only a few thousand still remain at present.
Then there are the Kurds. These are people with a distinct language living mostly in the south-east of Turkey. Up to this day, the issue of representation is a controversial one. Due to the necessarily centralised and rigid parameters of the civil code, the Turkish state has huge difficulties in dealing with their linguistic and other issues. Kurdish "political parties" are usually banned; the party that gains the most sympathy from the Kurds is the ruling AKP, in power since 2002.
There are also the Armenians, as the Greeks, another Christian minority in Turkey, though generally they have had relatively few problems with the Turkish state over the years, as they have been accepting of their status within Turkey. For this reason, they don't need further mention.
So the foundation of the Turkish state was from its inception bound in insecurity, due to the ethnic and religious complexity of the country. The cult of "Kemalism" (in other words, following the secular "ideology" of Ataturk) has been the guiding principle of the Turkish state.
Until 2002, no openly religious party had been successful at the ballot box (apart from the brief and controversial rule of the religious "Refah" party in the mid-nineties, who were overthrown in a coup).
The fact that the "Islamist" AKP, who took power in that year, have remained in power and generally popular, is a testament to the lessons the AKP's politicians have learned: how to maintain, manufacture and manipulate popular opinion, as well as against the "secular" state itself. The last point, the campaign against the "secular establishment" is seen through the continuing "Ergenekon" conspiracy; a right-wing plot by nationalist politicians and military staff to engineer an internal crisis, allowing the military to take power from the "Islamist" government.
In general, the main point about the condition of "Turkish democracy" is this: the tenets of secularism and the status of Ataturk as a semi-revered founder of the republic, are inviolate and are not open to (negative) discussion.
Like Italy, Turkey has a plethora of parties, though only a small number of those that exist have ever tasted power in the lifetime of "Turkish democracy". Also like Italy, until the AKP came to power in 2002, most governments were coalitions of some sort, and their time in power was sometimes brief, especially in the seventies and nineties.
But the healthy number of parties (the lesser ones usually being a confusing combination of acronyms) does not change the fact that the status of "Turkish democracy" relies on the centralised state and in immovable civil code. This necessarily stymes opinion and dissent.
The irony now is that the governing AKP, who have been so critical of this rigid civil code over the years (as they had been at the wrong end of it in the past), are now using the same civil code to limit press freedom. The government is using it against those "secularists" who claim the AKP has its own Islamic agenda, and accuse the government of arrogance or worse.
The other components of the Turkish state, the judiciary, are caught in the middle of all this, between the government, military and secular sphere. Sometimes they have launched prosecutions against the government, sometimes against the military. The result has generally appeared to be a mess to most observers, with no sign of things being resolved in the near future.
So where does Egypt fit into all this?
Like Turkey, Egypt is culturally heterogenious: with a large Coptic Christian minority (10%), as well as the smaller Greek and Armenian churches. Also like Turkey, its modern secular state was founded by a military man, Abdul Nasser, in the 1950s. And, also like Turkey, the state has used the shield of "secularism" as a way to manage and impose its own version of "democracy" onto its population.
Until now. With the overthrown of Hosni Mubarak, there were fears of an Iranian-style Islamic revolution (as Iran itself had hoped, when it initially encouraged the protests). This fear, though, was based on a misunderstanding of the nature of Egpytian society, as well as wishes of the protesters themselves.
The protesters' model, as many of them said, was that of Turkey. But at the same time, 2011 in Egypt was not the same as 1923 in Turkey; for Egypt had already had their "Ataturk" moment with Nasser in the 1950s.
No, these young protesters wanted a model more like Turkey circa 2002. But at the same time, Turkey's AKP government happened as a gradual evolution using the current "Turkish democracy" system; it seems that what Egyptians are demanding is something less constrained by civil codes and unbending constitutions as Turkey - something more pure and unrefined.
We can see that by the fact that free expression and protest are happening organically as we speak. There have been signs of religious unrest between Coptic Christans and Muslims (though people have said that former Mubarak loyalists have been behind this in any case); but it also appears that Egyptians are, at least for the moment, willing to accept these occurances as the necessary "price" of true freedom.
That may sound a little like Donald Rumsfeld's notorious explanation of Iraq's anarchic "version" of democracy: "stuff happens". But the longer-term signs for Egyptian democracy are good. The religious divide in Egypt points towards a tendency for tolerance and acceptance of other points of view. The early years of Turkey's republic show us that there the religious and ethnic issues were papered over, with messy results in the long-term. Egypt seems to already be learning from those experiences; anyway, Egypt may be religiously diverse, but it ethnically fairly homogenous. Turkey, meanwhile, has yet to fully grasp the nettle of the Kurdish question.
So, to sum up, don't worry about Egypt: they know what they're doing. It may look a bit confusing now, but given time, Egypt has the clear potential to be a great example of Muslim Arab democracy. And it is also the biggest Arab country.
It would be ironic indeed if, after the lengthy fiasco and bloody chaos one American president caused to establish democracy in Iraq, his successor could give a speech in the Egypt, and less than two years later, preside over a spontaneous democratic revolution in that same country.
So much for the supposed benefits of "regime change".
The Turkish experience is the one that many Egyptians have been claiming to act as their inspiration, but this is itself deserves more than a cursory look at the similarities and differences: both between it and Western democracies in general, as well as the social differences between it and Egypt.
Turkey may be the most obviously Muslim "democracy" in the world (except for Pakistan and Lebanon, who have their own problems), but even that label deserves some qualifications.
Turkey was founded by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) as a secular state, from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. It was NOT, initially a democracy. Ataturk understood that full "democracy" would be difficult for Turks to deal with straightaway, so the party he founded, the CHP, ruled the country unopposed until 1950, from the foundation of the republic in 1923. Ataturk died in 1938. Multiparty elections in 1950 resulted in the CHP being defeated by another party, and was out of power for ten years.
But this is not the only issue. For "Turkey" to remain a stable state, issues such as obvious ethnic and religious divides had to be pasted over by the state: The country's biggest city, Istanbul, for example, had a huge population of Greeks, and there were also Greeks scattered all across the nation, in the west in particular. This issue was dealt with through mutual population exchanges with Greece (who had a large number of Turks in the east of their country). But there still remained large numbers of Greeks in Istanbul upto the 1950s; a controversial "pogrom" against the Greeks took place in that decade, that encouraged almost all the Greeks to leave. Only a few thousand still remain at present.
Then there are the Kurds. These are people with a distinct language living mostly in the south-east of Turkey. Up to this day, the issue of representation is a controversial one. Due to the necessarily centralised and rigid parameters of the civil code, the Turkish state has huge difficulties in dealing with their linguistic and other issues. Kurdish "political parties" are usually banned; the party that gains the most sympathy from the Kurds is the ruling AKP, in power since 2002.
There are also the Armenians, as the Greeks, another Christian minority in Turkey, though generally they have had relatively few problems with the Turkish state over the years, as they have been accepting of their status within Turkey. For this reason, they don't need further mention.
So the foundation of the Turkish state was from its inception bound in insecurity, due to the ethnic and religious complexity of the country. The cult of "Kemalism" (in other words, following the secular "ideology" of Ataturk) has been the guiding principle of the Turkish state.
Until 2002, no openly religious party had been successful at the ballot box (apart from the brief and controversial rule of the religious "Refah" party in the mid-nineties, who were overthrown in a coup).
The fact that the "Islamist" AKP, who took power in that year, have remained in power and generally popular, is a testament to the lessons the AKP's politicians have learned: how to maintain, manufacture and manipulate popular opinion, as well as against the "secular" state itself. The last point, the campaign against the "secular establishment" is seen through the continuing "Ergenekon" conspiracy; a right-wing plot by nationalist politicians and military staff to engineer an internal crisis, allowing the military to take power from the "Islamist" government.
In general, the main point about the condition of "Turkish democracy" is this: the tenets of secularism and the status of Ataturk as a semi-revered founder of the republic, are inviolate and are not open to (negative) discussion.
Like Italy, Turkey has a plethora of parties, though only a small number of those that exist have ever tasted power in the lifetime of "Turkish democracy". Also like Italy, until the AKP came to power in 2002, most governments were coalitions of some sort, and their time in power was sometimes brief, especially in the seventies and nineties.
But the healthy number of parties (the lesser ones usually being a confusing combination of acronyms) does not change the fact that the status of "Turkish democracy" relies on the centralised state and in immovable civil code. This necessarily stymes opinion and dissent.
The irony now is that the governing AKP, who have been so critical of this rigid civil code over the years (as they had been at the wrong end of it in the past), are now using the same civil code to limit press freedom. The government is using it against those "secularists" who claim the AKP has its own Islamic agenda, and accuse the government of arrogance or worse.
The other components of the Turkish state, the judiciary, are caught in the middle of all this, between the government, military and secular sphere. Sometimes they have launched prosecutions against the government, sometimes against the military. The result has generally appeared to be a mess to most observers, with no sign of things being resolved in the near future.
So where does Egypt fit into all this?
Like Turkey, Egypt is culturally heterogenious: with a large Coptic Christian minority (10%), as well as the smaller Greek and Armenian churches. Also like Turkey, its modern secular state was founded by a military man, Abdul Nasser, in the 1950s. And, also like Turkey, the state has used the shield of "secularism" as a way to manage and impose its own version of "democracy" onto its population.
Until now. With the overthrown of Hosni Mubarak, there were fears of an Iranian-style Islamic revolution (as Iran itself had hoped, when it initially encouraged the protests). This fear, though, was based on a misunderstanding of the nature of Egpytian society, as well as wishes of the protesters themselves.
The protesters' model, as many of them said, was that of Turkey. But at the same time, 2011 in Egypt was not the same as 1923 in Turkey; for Egypt had already had their "Ataturk" moment with Nasser in the 1950s.
No, these young protesters wanted a model more like Turkey circa 2002. But at the same time, Turkey's AKP government happened as a gradual evolution using the current "Turkish democracy" system; it seems that what Egyptians are demanding is something less constrained by civil codes and unbending constitutions as Turkey - something more pure and unrefined.
We can see that by the fact that free expression and protest are happening organically as we speak. There have been signs of religious unrest between Coptic Christans and Muslims (though people have said that former Mubarak loyalists have been behind this in any case); but it also appears that Egyptians are, at least for the moment, willing to accept these occurances as the necessary "price" of true freedom.
That may sound a little like Donald Rumsfeld's notorious explanation of Iraq's anarchic "version" of democracy: "stuff happens". But the longer-term signs for Egyptian democracy are good. The religious divide in Egypt points towards a tendency for tolerance and acceptance of other points of view. The early years of Turkey's republic show us that there the religious and ethnic issues were papered over, with messy results in the long-term. Egypt seems to already be learning from those experiences; anyway, Egypt may be religiously diverse, but it ethnically fairly homogenous. Turkey, meanwhile, has yet to fully grasp the nettle of the Kurdish question.
So, to sum up, don't worry about Egypt: they know what they're doing. It may look a bit confusing now, but given time, Egypt has the clear potential to be a great example of Muslim Arab democracy. And it is also the biggest Arab country.
It would be ironic indeed if, after the lengthy fiasco and bloody chaos one American president caused to establish democracy in Iraq, his successor could give a speech in the Egypt, and less than two years later, preside over a spontaneous democratic revolution in that same country.
So much for the supposed benefits of "regime change".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)