http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/30/AR2011013001794.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Egypt's uprising should be encouraged
By Anne Applebaum
Monday, January 31, 2011
DAVOS, SWITZERLAND
As fate would have it, I am in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, and not in
Cairo. All around me is gloom. The markets are down. Oil is up. A thorny bundle
of uncertainties has just been thrown at the fragile economic recovery - just
as it was all going so well! The other night, I heard a famous economic pundit
admit that someone had asked him only a few days earlier whether events in
Tunisia had any significance for the world economy. No, he had said. None
whatsoever. But now he was busily eating his words: If Egypt blows, anything
could happen.
I don't know what people were saying in Davos or its equivalent in November
1989, because I was in Berlin. But I bet it was more or less the same thing. In
1991, when Ukraine was about to declare its independence from the Soviet Union,
President George H.W. Bush made a declaration (this was the infamous "Chicken
Kiev" speech) in praise of the Soviet Union. For years, he and his advisers ran
around Eastern Europe and the Balkans doing duct-tape diplomacy, trying to
piece together again a fracturing world.
Politicians like stability. Bankers like stability. But the "stability" we have
so long embraced in the Arab world wasn't really stability. It was repression.
The dictators we have supported, or anyway tolerated - the Zine el-Abidine Ben
Alis, the Hosni Mubaraks, the various kings and princes - have stayed in power
by preventing economic development, silencing free speech, keeping tight
control of education and above all by stamping down hard on anything resembling
civil society. More books are translated every year into Greek - a language
spoken by more than 10 million people - than into Arabic, a language spoken by
more than 220 million. Independent organizations of all kinds, from political
parties and private businesses to women's groups and academic societies, have
been watched, harassed or banned altogether.
The result: Egypt, like many Arab societies, has a wealthy and well-armed elite
at the top and a fanatical and well-organized Islamic fundamentalist movement
at the bottom. In between lies a large and unorganized body of people who have
never participated in politics, whose business activities have been limited by
corruption and nepotism, and whose access to the outside world has been
hampered by stupid laws and suspicious bureaucrats. Note that the Egyptian
government's decision to shut down the country's Internet access over the
weekend - something it can do because Internet access is still so limited - had
almost no impact on the demonstrators. For all the guff being spoken about
Twitter and social media, the uprising in Cairo appears to be a very
old-fashioned, almost 19th-century revolution: People see other people going
out on the streets and decide to join them.
We are surprised, and no wonder. For the past decade, successive American
administrations have sometimes paid lip service to democracy and freedom of
speech in the Arab world. Some American organizations, official and unofficial
- the National Endowment for Democracy comes to mind - have supported
independent human rights activists in Egypt and elsewhere. Some American
journalists, such as my Post colleague Jackson Diehl, have cultivated Egyptian
democrats, interviewed them, written about them. But to American presidents and
secretaries of state of both political parties, other issues - oil, Israel and
then the war on terrorism - always seemed more important. Our aid subsidized
the Egyptian army and police, and the Egyptians know it. In Cairo, police were
firing tear gas labeled "Made in the USA" at protesters.
Hence the gloom. If there are potential leaders in Egypt, other than the stuffy
and somehow unlikely Mohamed ElBaradei, then we don't really know them. If
there is an alternative elite, we haven't worked with it, as we had worked with
the alternative elites in Central Europe in the 1980s. George W. Bush's
administration spoke a good deal about "democracy promotion" but then allowed
the idea to become confused with the invasion of Iraq. Real democracy promotion
- support for journalists, judges and educators; financing of independent media
and radio; encouragement of open discussion and debate - has never been a
priority in the Arab world.
Our options are now limited. But there are a few, and we should exercise them
immediately. We should speak directly to the Egyptian public, not only to its
leaders. We should congratulate Egyptians for having the courage to take to the
streets. We should smile and embrace instability. And we should rejoice -
because change, in repressive societies, is good.
[email protected]
This Story
a.. Egypt protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab
world
b.. Join the discussion, Tuesday at 11 a.m. ET
c.. Obama administration could still get it right on Egypt
d.. Warily watching the Arab revolt
e.. Egypt's uprising should be encouraged
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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