WHITHER WANA? Reflections on the Arab Uprisings
Arab world. The Arab uprising has shown that the masses will not accept this form of governance any more. This is perhaps the single most significant achievement of the uprising.
The rejection of despotic dynasties has expectedly strengthened calls for honest, upright men and women in power who are accountable and answerable to the people through fair and free elections, on the one hand, and for the creation of mechanisms that will enhance popular participation in the democratic process, on the other. Equally important, there is outright anger in much of the Arab world against the lifestyles of the powerful: their ostentatious opulence and their hideous extravagance. It is related to a far more significant demand for the reduction of economic disparities and the equitable distribution of wealth and opportunities.
Two, while there was a movement for change, it would be wrong to describe it as “peaceful” or “non-violent.” That the anti-Gaddafi protest resorted to arms within a few days of its eruption in Benghazi is an indisputable fact. This raises a fundamental question about people’s struggles for political change. The struggle for change has to remain peaceful and non-violent however difficult the circumstances may be. Only if it is peaceful, will it be able to minimise the danger of bloody feuds and violent factional wars after its victory.
The defenders of the violence that marred the anti-Gaddafi movement argue that faced with Gaddafi’s brutal security apparatus, the movement had no choice but to fight. But other movements for change — against the Shah of Iran in 1979; Marcos in the Philippines in 1986; East European dictatorships in 1989; and Indonesia’s Suharto in 1998 — which also had to confront armies that were sometimes far more formidable than Gaddafi’s, refrained by and large from using weapons. What explains their non-violent approach?
Because these movements were genuinely popular mass movements with millions and millions of people on their side — like the movements in Iran and the Philippines — the 67