D-Day in Cairo: Decolonizing Democracy

In the Diaspora

Jens Hanssen is Associate Professor of Middle East History at the University of Toronto.

By Jens Hanssen

Events in Tunisia and Egypt remind us that there is nothing universal about Western liberal democracies and that it is the wretched of the earth who keep the promise of democracy alive. We are witnessing a historic moment in the Arab world, a moment to envisage a shared humanity and a common destiny. The spontaneous outpouring of democratic aspirations in Tunisia and Egypt over the last few weeks has deeply shaken the way the West imagines itself and the way it manages the world. While much depends on international solidarity, the future of a rejuvenated, inclusive and democratic Arab world is determined by the millions of pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt who are shattering the violent post-cold war order and who are redefining the culture of Third World politics. The community that is defending Cairo’s Liberation Square is instilling enormous national pride across the Arab world from Rabat to Baghdad and from Yemen to Syria. And sooner or later it will lead to the fall of more authoritarian regimes across the region.

(This is one of a series of weekly columns from Guyanese in the diaspora and others with an interest in issues related to Guyana and the Caribbean)

What made this revolutionary moment possible was its utter spontaneity and the total absence of any conspiracy, real or imagined. The political storm in Tunisia and Egypt broke too quickly and too unexpectedly to be aligned with American and UN scripts as happened in the Ukraine, Lebanon or Iran. As this storm gathers force it exposes the paradox that expanding the realm of freedom necessarily means expanding the realm of accepting Western hegemony. In fact, it suggests that oppressive Arab regimes sustain (and are vitally sustained by) liberal democracies in the West in the name of stability whose unholy trinity is oil, Israel and Islamophobia.

It is moments like these, precious and all too fleeting in history, that remind us that the universal ideals of humanity and freedom are safeguarded by the wretched of the earth against the interests of Western liberalism. Did not the Haitian revolution keep the promise of these ideals alive at a time when Napoleon’s France descended into dictatorship? In the twentieth century, they mobilized people in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America against Western counterinsurgency: Mossadegh’s Iran, Lumumba’s Congo, Allende’s Chile, and Aristide’s Haiti were democratic revolutions against dictators owned by the West. And like in Spain in the 1930s and in Hungary in 1956 they were betrayed by Western liberal democracies. These fragile moments of the past communicate to today’s Tunisia and Egypt the possibility of a common humanity.

The ‘Cairo Commune’ and the support it is getting from protestors in all other major Egyptian cities are demonstrating to Arabs and the whole world that as one placard read “Yes we can, too,” and we do it on our own terms. A recent editorial in al-Akhbar the popular Beirut daily has noted, “young Egyptians are struggling not only to get rid of President Hosni Mubarak but also to restore the self and the dignity of Egypt and Arabs from the abyss of defeat.” Since the Egyptian military defeat in the June 1967 war against Israel, the editorial continues, Arabs have suffered from the Camp David peace process, from the unfettered occupation of Palestinian land, the civil war in Lebanon, militant Islam, the slaughter in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and under the on-going American occupation, and the looting of national wealth by comprador business elites aligned with their dictatorships. This then becomes a moment of cultural catharsis that has the potential to liberate Arabs from almost half a century of crippling self-doubt and humiliation.  (http://www.al-akhbar.com/node /3435)

The revolution did not start on Liberation Square. Unarmed multitudes had to push back police forces to reach it in the last days of January 2011. In what will likely become one of the iconic internet clips of their surge, peaceful demonstrators marched against hundreds of policemen, security forces, armed personal carriers and water cannons to force their way to the heart of Cairo. In the day-long battle of Qasr al-Nil Bridge, they now chanted the Tunisian national anthem on the march, now collectively lowered their heads for prayer to hold their ground. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= dBtYLBQPRGQ). When looters attacked the Cairo Museum and the Alexandria Library, human chains defended the national heritage; when the defiant regime put into effect a nation-wide telecommunications blackout, the protesters mobilized in mosques and by word of mouth; When the dying regime sent in the cavalry to break up the ‘Commune’, the young protesters defended themselves with makeshift barricades, stones and their bare hands.

Egyptians know what they owe to the Tunisian uprising that toppled President Ben Ali’s Western-supported regime of 23 years. For it was from the town of Sidi Bouzid on the fertile but neglected plains of southern Tunisia, far away from the buzzing world of the internet, that this revolutionary moment spread on December 17, 2011. On that day, a young orphaned peddler who had abandoned his studies to sustain a family of eight set himself on fire in a final act of protest against the repeated confiscations of his meager livelihood and the constant abuse he and others suffered at the hands of the authorities. When the ensuing protests in rural Tunisia swept into the capital, trade unions mobilized and soon the army fraternized with the masses of demonstrators. The Tunisians’ struggle against remnants of the old regime continues but their spark has ignited Egyptians who held a national “day of rage” on January 25, Police Day.

The dramatic events in Tunisia and Egypt have drawn comparisons with the fall of the Berlin Wall that brought an end to the cold war. When Mubarak’s regime thugs tried to crush the protesters on horseback, it raised specters of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1988. The demonstrators prevailed and their resilience over the past ten days is reminiscent of the waves of Serbian demonstrations that brought down Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. In their tactics, the demonstrations also evoke the self-sacrifice and tenacity of Gandhi’s non-violent resistance, while their long-term effect on Arab culture may turn out to be what the civil rights movement in the US and the Rodney Riots in Jamaica were to black consciousness.

Despite these affinities, the protest movement is deeply rooted in modern Egyptian history of political dissent against decades of arbitrary rule under emergency law, Mubarak’s embezzlement of billions of dollars, and his complicity with Israel’s incarceration of Palestinians in the Gaza Ghetto. Among the demonstrators on the square was Nawal Saadawi, the legendary Egyptian feminist and activist for social justice. At 80 years, she embodies the Egyptians’ memory of resistance: “We have demonstrated against King Farouk, and against Nasser. I was imprisoned by Sadat and I have been exiled by Mubarak, but this I have never seen so we have to sit and stay.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= ZM1scxpmbWQ&feature=player_embedded)

As the ‘Communards’ sit and stay put on Liberation Square, they will no doubt be debating the lessons of the past and the choices their political ancestors made. For example, the great nationalist leader Saad Zaghlul who shamed the British into getting the Egyptians’ voice heard at the Paris peace conference in 1919 and who, through passive resistance, wrested partial independence from the clutches of British occupation three years later. Seasoned activists like Nawal Saadawi would have reminded the younger crowd of the dangers of compromising with the regime: In 1954, Nasser conceded to mass protests demanding that the army return to the barracks and allow for free elections, only to rescind his promise and arrest their leaders after the demonstrations stopped. This turned out to be the last time a strong parliament was conceivable in Egypt, until now. The collective leadership on Liberation Square has clearly understood from history that freedom is not something that is granted magnanimously by the powerful but something that has to be actively taken by the people.

Many of today’s demonstrators are seasoned activists in their own right who came of age in the solidarity committees in support of the second Palestinian Intifada since 2000, the anti-war movement protesting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the labour unrest of 2006 and 2007 in the Nile Delta. These most recent events in which 25,000 Egyptian workers went on strike, were supported by social activists called “The April 6 Youth Movement” who transmitted the strikes to the world wide web (http://www.merip.org/mero/mero092907.html).

It was the martyrdom of one of their own, the blogger Khaled Said who was beaten to death by Egyptian security forces in July 2010 that reenergized the anti-Mubarak protest movement. Groups like “April 6” and “We are all Khaled Said” have emerged as tenacious organizers of the protests. Their democratic vision is clear and self-evident: Mubarak must lift restrictions and leave office; they will negotiate with a caretaker government the transition to new and free elections; a new constitution be drafted for parliamentary ratification; and the army must be subordinate to civilian authorities.

The historical background and the universality of these demands notwithstanding, Western pundits and politicians claim that Egyptians, like all Arabs, do not have a tradition of democracy, and need a big man to rule over them. The idea that Arabs are unfit for self-determination goes back to the very origins of the Arab state system after World War I. At that time the aspirations for independence in the wake of the demise of the Ottoman empire were dismissed by the British and French imperialists and cheaply abandoned by the American president Woodrow Wilson. The fact that this racist notion rears its ugly head once again to mask the mantra of stability during this magnificent moment of common humanity gives D-Day in Cairo a more universal dimension than the mere departure of Mubarak. It demands nothing less than the decolonization of democracy.