The Next Arab Decade

Alternative Futures

Hisham Sharabi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000303988
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is concerned with defining the nature of the crisis of the Arab world, with tracing its possible development, and with charting the conditions of its possible outcomes, addressing the next decade from the vantage of 1986 rather than that of 1985.

Part One
The State, Democracy, and Human Rights

1
Forecast for the Future: State and Society in Egypt, Sudan, and Libya in 1995

Ibrahim Ibrahim

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Egypt’s prospects for the mid-1990s and the future of its immediate, and important, Arab neighbors, Sudan and Libya.

As with all projections into an uncertain future, many arbitrary elements come into play, along with occasional moments of wishful thinking on the part of the speculator. Nevertheless, this exercise of forecasting the future can be deemed worthwhile, despite the risk of error, simply because the problems of state and society in the Middle East are mirrored throughout the Third World.

By the turn of the century, there will be more than 200 million people living in the Arab world. Indeed, the enormous material and manpower wealth the region already contains requires each of us to summon forth any degree of prescience he has to attempt to sort out the most promising avenues for political and social development in the years to come.

Therefore, one must begin with Egypt—the largest, most advanced, most powerful country—and, until recently, the undisputed leader among the Arab states. Today, the bright promise that Egypt holds has been greatly dimmed by a complex web of social and economic ills that threaten the very existence of society. If these conditions are left to fester, it can be expected that the society will eventually explode.

Before proposing a way out of this unfortunate predicament, let us first examine the dimensions of Egypt’s problems today. It is weakened by a tremendous crisis propelled by a spiralling demographic explosion: the population, even by conservative estimates, will reach 60 million by 1995. This burden will exacerbate existing dilemmas—such as the shortage of food, housing, land, and water—and further strain an already sorely tested infrastructure.

The decaying infrastructure and the housing crisis may be Egypt’s most pressing problems: one-third of the population is without adequate accommodation, sanitation facilities, drinking water, or electricity.¹

Given the fact that Egypt’s budget is strapped with a deepening international deficit—currently debt repayment absorbs 25 percent of its revenues, and this condition will become more critical in the next decade if no solution is found—Mubarak, or his successor, must continue Egypt’s dependence on American and international aid.

It is estimated that Egypt is dependent upon foreign aid for nearly 60 percent of its basic needs and upon Washington alone for 70 percent of the economic aid destined for food, military equipment, oil drilling and refining, and infrastructure modernization. Egypt’s debt is particularly on the increase in the military field, as President Mubarak recently indicated. “The military debt is creating problems for our economic plan. I need the help of the U.S. not to put me in a difficult position.”²

But, if one presumes a detente can be reached between the two superpowers within the next decade, Egypt will then find itself faced with a new dilemma: in an age of detente, an American Congress will be far less inclined to raise, or perhaps even maintain, its current high level of aid to Egypt. That congressional reluctance may be reinforced in the future by a softened Egyptian stance toward Communism in the Afro-Arab world.

It should not be overlooked that American aid to Egypt today is linked to that given Israel, and it can be expected that the U.S. administration(s) and Congress will continue to monitor Egypt’s relations with Israel and ensure that Egypt remains within U.S.-Israeli strategic designs. Indeed, unlike Egypt, Israel already enjoys preferential treatment in terms of aid as well as trade, a favoritism that will be institutionally reinforced by 1995: on April 23, 1985, the United States signed an agreement with Israel that will eliminate all trade barriers between the two countries within ten years, a move hailed by President Ronald Reagan as adding “a new dimension to the special relationship between our countries.”³

Like many Third World countries, Egypt’s fortune—or misfortune—depends in large measure on relations between the two superpowers. To be sure, Egypt’s geopolitical importance has given her the privilege of living, although not thriving, on international largesse. But such a state of dependency is dangerous, especially when rivalry between the two superpowers comes to an end, as happened in the early 1970s; when detente was reached between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972, it foreclosed some opportunities for Egypt to exploit superpower rivalries to her material advantage. Detente’s impact was in both domestic and foreign policy fields: it brought about infitah, the economic “open-door” policy; a break with the Soviet Union; and alignment with the conservative Gulf states and the United States.⁴

Given the likelihood of a Washington-Moscow reconciliation by 1995, Egypt—again, unlike Israel—will be left out in the cold. Cairo has little choice, therefore: it must undertake a plan designed to result in self-sufficiency by the year 2000. And it must achieve that self-sufficiency by itself. To do this, it must reclaim an area equivalent to virtually all of its current arable land in order to be able to feed its burgeoning masses. But pursuit of this policy has been shown to be both very costly and economically unsound in the long term.

Since the answer to this dual problem cannot be found within its own borders, Egypt must look outside, to its closest Arab neighbors, Sudan and Libya, for each is endowed with unique possibilities. In combination, at a propitious political moment, the three Arab states could become a self-reliant unit, able not only to escape the pressing social and political quandary each faces, but also to generate a vibrant and lasting economic order which could carry all three states well into the twenty-first century. It is, perhaps, a familiar idea, but one which has added urgency—and possibility—today.

Sudan, a massive country one-third the size of the United States, is a tremendous untapped agricultural reservoir, with more than 200 million acres of arable land. Its animal wealth includes tens of millions of heads of livestock, with additional resources that are beginning to surface, notably promising oil reserves and mineral wealth. Yet this exceptionally well endowed and potentially thriving country will continue to face dire economic and institutional maladies in the next ten years unless it can seek a solution outside its borders.

With a population of only 23 million, Sudan today ranks among the 25 poorest nations of the world; despite the fact that, apart from Egypt, it is the second largest recipient of American aid on the African continent, it remains, nevertheless, one of the most indebted nations. It lacks both a sufficient body of advanced manpower, with many of its best minds at work outside of the country, and a minimum of the infrastructural prerequisites for development.

There is also justifiable concern about tribal and associational differences, as well as regional and sectarian cleavages. Like most African countries, Sudan suffers from its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity. When it obtained independence, the Muslim North and the animist-Christian South were almost alien parts of the country; soon after independence a civil war ensued, lasting 17 years. However, on March 3, 1972, a peaceful settlement was reached between the two regions and a formal agreement was signed, according to which a regional government and regional institutions were created. In the mid-1980s, the peace broke down and a second revolt erupted in the South when Numayri extended his “Islamicization” policy and dictatorship to that region: the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, led by Colonel John Garang, is fighting now not only against the application of the shari’a but also for regional self-government and the restoration of the Addis Ababa agreement.

The recent successful revolution against Numayri’s regime might bring about a second reconciliation with the South; this is not impossible in view of the fact that North and South alike are cognizant of their Sudanese identity. Today, more than ever, secession is anathema to the two sides. Apart from the fact that borders have become sacrosanct in the African idiom, neither South nor North alone can escape the hardships that Sudan as a whole must confront; difficult as it may seem at present, then, unity will continue to be imperative.

As Sudan’s ambassador to Canada, the respected Southerner Francis M. Deng, so eloquently put it in 1981:

One of the most challenging intellectual and diplomatic tasks in Africa is how to reconcile principles that now appear to be in conflict. In particular, the principle of maintaining the inherited boundaries needs to be reconciled with the right of self-determination by balancing national unity with the aspirations of minority groups for recognition and effective participation in their own government. While it is not easy to achieve a satisfactory balance, I know it can be done because it has been done….⁵ (my italics)

Obviously the ambassador was referring to the 1972 peaceful settlement of the civil war between North and South, an achievement which brought reconciliation and participation of the South in the national government. For more than ten years, reconciliation and unity have freed national resources for development and have opened up possibilities for better relations with Sudan’s African neighbors.⁶

One of Sudan’s eight neighbors is Libya, which, too, is a precarious entity: despite its oil wealth, it suffers from a scarcity of population and a lack of trained manpower. The unstable character of Muammar Qadhafi’s Libya is obvious in view of his numerous attempts at various unions, including ones with Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Sudan, and the more recent one with his purported arch-enemy, Morocco.

This instability stems from the fact that Libya has never had the sense of surety and confidence that comes with the status of statehood. To be sure, the Sanusi king transformed the Sufi order into a monarchical one, but he failed to create a political community. Qadhafi inherited this rather precarious polity: using modern techniques and the advice and assistance of hired hands, he has been laboring to integrate the countryside with the city and to centralize the government.

To be sure, Qadhafi’s social and economic policies were in line with the wishes of the majority: free housing, medical care, education, and transportation for any needy Libyan. More than Nasser’s Egypt, Libya under Qadhafi has radically overturned the old order. His commitment to egalitarian values brought about a total nationalization of the economy: private enterprises were turned over to employees in workers’ committees; rental properties were seized; retail trade was abolished; and, to guarantee that all Libyans had equal assets, bank accounts were frozen. Indeed, Libyan society in the late 1970s had been radically restructured, especially since a substantial part of the population had grown into adulthood with the revolution.⁷

But despite social and economic reforms, the state under Qadhafi has remained omnipotent: the state takes precedence over society. It has been estimated that by 1981 as many as 100,000 Libyans had left the country to join the six or seven major opposition groups operating in exile.⁸ Both the middle class and the growing intelligentsia are challenging the authoritarian nature of the state and its repressive policy. At the same time, state oppression and the counter-assassination attempts it has engendered not only reveal the dichotomy between the people and their government, but also betray a sort of civil war raging beneath the surface.

Libya’s present behavior mirrors the lack of cohesion in its contemporary society. It suffers from ecological divisions between an urban minority in Tripoli, on the one hand, and hinterland tribal and rural populations, on the other. One should remember that Libya became a unitary state only in 1963. During the monarchy it had been much more of a loose federal state composed of three wilayat (Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan).

The unification of the state was achieved with the expansion of bureaucracy and the armed forces under Qadhafi. But—notwithstanding Qadhafi’s schwär-merei for and total devotion to Nasser and the idea of pan-Arabism—it was the lack of a well-defined Libyan identity that propelled him to look beyond Libya’s borders, to seek a wider entity in Arab unity.⁹

Thus, Qadhafi’s numerous attempts at establishing Arab unity can be likened to the pan-Arab ideology of the Ba’th in Syria, which, conscious of the absence of a well-defined Syrian national identity, attempted to transcend the partition of Greater Syria through unity. A post-Qadhafi Libya will continue to seek unity as a means of securing its identity.

Today, in Libya, Sudan, and Egypt, as in the Arab East in general, the authoritarian, bureaucratic state has exhausted itself. Even Nasser, the architect and master of the bureaucratic, authoritarian Egyptian state, could see—alas, belatedly—his own failures in this regard:

The stage of revolutionary administrative measures is in fact outmoded. The time has come for us to rely upon the popular conscience of the people and not upon government intervention.… The only path that will allow us to meet the challenge of reaction and imperialism, the only way that will enable us to accomplish the transformation from capitalism to socialism is that of political and not governmental action.¹⁰

It is true that in the past two or three decades the bureaucratic authoritarian state was able to suppress society at will, depoliticizing the population in the process. Its rationale was a convenient alibi—that internal state security was a prerequisite to true independence, Arab unity, socialism, development, and, most importantly, victory over Israel.

But now it has become obvious that the state has failed on all of these fronts. Economic disarray and dependence on foreign aid underscore the failure of Arab socialism; even the idea of pan-Arabism has been relegated to the back burner.

Having thus failed to deliver, the state in each of the three countries has betrayed its impotence. Today, a state of immobilization, rather than one of stability, prevails. Indeed, the state is cracking under the stress; like the Iranian state under the Shah, it too will fall apart.¹¹ Government by the sheer force of coercion and repression will no longer be tolerated by a society reaching for emancipation and maturity. This is seen most vividly in the recent popular uprising against Numayri, who, it should be remembered, was last reelected with 99.6 percent of the vote.

Socioeconomic change and the natural erosion of power at the end of each and every generation, coupled with the aspirations of the masses for freedom, social justice, and economic welfare, all contribute to ripen the conditions for change in the state. I predict, therefore, that the regime in each of these three countries will be replaced within the next decade by freely-elected governments, thereby setting the stage for true human liberation.

This change, particularly in the case of Egypt, will be fueled by the demographic explosion, accelerated by the rise of millions of students and graduates from secondary schools and universities. With 43 percent of its people under the age of 15, and with a student population of more than ten million—a staggering number, larger than the entire population of many Arab states,¹² Egypt’s crisis cannot be resolved by doses, no matter their size, of international assistance. Furthermore, revenues from oil exports, emigrant remittances, the Suez Canal, and tourism also are dependent on regional and international factors beyond Egypt’s control.¹³

Rather, Egypt’s internal chaos will be heightened by a drop in workers’ remittances, as the infrastructure is completed in the Gulf. That in turn will prompt the return of many unskilled workers, who will be consigned, like so many millions of others in Egypt today, to unemployment or underemployment.

It can be expected that millions of workers, trade unionists, and new urban dwellers will coalesce with students to hasten the rise of resistance in many forms, including militant Islamic and leftist groups. In this setting, mass and continuing unrest, and perhaps violence, will result.

In such a state of anarchy, there can be no viable alternative to parliamentary rule: it will become a prima facie imperative—and the only one—to reintroduce order and placate the competing groups, institutionalizing a more sophisticated form of representative government in the process.

Indeed, Egypt is more fit than most countries in the Third World to return to the multi-party system (and parliamentary government). Compared to other societies in the Afro-Asian world, Egypt has a cohesive society and a long history of secular institutions, a large body of modern, educated men and women, but, above all, a long tradition of tolerance and participation. As far back as the 1860s, Egypt, under Khedive Ismail, was experimenting with parliamentary activities. One hundred years ago, in replying to the Khedive’s opening speech on January 27, 1879, to the assembly, one member expressed himself as follows:

We, the representatives of the Egyptian nation and defenders of its rights and interests, which are at the same time those of the government, thank H.E. the Khedive for his goodness in assembling this chamber of delegates which is the foundation-stone of all progress and the turning-point in the achievement of our liberty without which no equality of rights is possible, equality which is the essence of justice.¹⁴

In the interwar period there was also a genuine and serious “liberal experiment”:¹⁵ most intellectuals and political leaders adhered to and fought with vigor for the establishment of a freely e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Introduction: Patriarchy and Dependency and the Future of Arab Society
• Part One The State, Democracy, and Human Rights
• Part Two The Political Economy of Arab International Relations
• Part Three The Economy: Breakthrough or Breakdown?
• Part Four Cultural Change, Creativity, and Authenticity
• Part Five Social Transformations
• Part Six The Arab-Israeli Conflict
• Part Seven Priorities for Arab Studies
• About the Contributors
• Index