Challenges Ahead in the Middle East
Challenges Ahead in the Middle East
by A. Lawrence Chickering
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Two decades ago, flying with a friend over Cairo's City of the Dead, Hosni Mubarak pointed to the forest of TV antennas below and remarked, "This is why I no longer control Egypt as I once did."
Although the United States knew the events were coming that have swept through the Middle East, it was utterly unprepared for them. These events, protesting dictatorships and promoting democracy in a number of countries, will disturb the region for as long as it takes to complete the revolution and transition to stable democracies. If U.S. policy is to support this transition and promote change, it must consider differences in internal conditions leading up to the unrest within each country. But underneath the differences are much deeper social and cultural similarities that represent the real challenge. Unfortunately, these similarities are now being largely ignored.
Mainstream comment on the recent unrest denies that any common social or political force is driving the unrest and only emphasizes the differences among the countries where the unrest is strongest (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and other countries). They emphasize different elements ranging from the role of the army, the nature of the autocratic governments, the state of the education system, the role of women, and a blizzard of other differences.
There is, however, a common force driving unrest that is spreading across the region. It is the desire of tribal people for freedom. The freedom they seek has many components: freedom to abandon lives rigidly defined by traditional roles, freedom to participate actively in their own economic and social progress, freedom from dictators and freedom to participate actively in civic life. In essence, it is the desire to be free to leave the passive role-bound nature of traditional tribal life and choose an active role in modern life.
If people are to be free to make such a change in their lives, they must embrace a new set of values: social trust, active citizenship, individual empowerment, self-governance, and a sense of equality. These values are crucial to any healthy and stable transition to democracy. Without them there will be increasing unrest and instability throughout the region.
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A. Lawrence Chickering is a social entrepreneur and writer who designs and implements civil society strategies in public policy. He is founder and President of Educate Girls Globally (EGG), which has developed a powerful program for promoting girls' education and empowering traditional communities by reforming government schools, partnering with the government of the very tribal state of Rajasthan in India. Before that, he founded the International Center for Economic Growth, which was headquartered in Panama and played a major role in promoting economic reform in the more than fifty countries over ten years. He is coauthor of Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (2006). The author would like to thank Larry Biehl, P. Edward Haley, and Tom Rautenberg for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
