'Arab Spring," once an inspiration, now a more cautionary tale

17 April LA Times. Carol Williams


....Although some opposition groups are getting organized into political factions to challenge the Islamist bent of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government, “many of these groups don’t have any real leadership. They’re just renegade activists” whose scattered protests have little effect, Abdo said.

People in the gulf states who describe themselves as pro-reform are souring on the idea of taking to the streets to demand change because of what they see in Syria, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, said Nathan Field, who co-founded a business services start-up to aid potential investors in the Middle East. He warns that the turmoil is scaring away private capital.

“People in the gulf are looking at how reform has played out elsewhere,  and they don’t really like what they’re seeing,” said Field, who lived in Saudi Arabia for the two years that straddled the early Arab Spring changes. “They’re seeing two things happening: violence and economic collapse.”

The negative examples of what revolution brings have not only slowed reform’s progress elsewhere, they have made many who spearheaded successful regime changes regretful, Field said.

“Unless the government makes some real job-creating economic reforms, I think there’s a strong likelihood for a return to authoritarianism,” Field said, reiterating dire warnings he made in an article for the Atlantic Council's EgyptSource website this week. “People have in their minds that at least they had a degree of stability and certainty to their lives under Mubarak.”........

Create Jobs or Kiss the Revolution Goodbye

The Atlantic Council, April 15th 2012

There were many reasons that Egyptians supported the revolution when it occurred in early 2011.  Lawyers usually did so out of a desire to reform the legal system or draft a new constitution.   Others were angry about the use of torture by the police and security forces.   But for many – perhaps even the majority – it was based on nothing more than a vague hope that a new system would bring something better, especially from an economic perspective.

Yet two years later, not only has that hoped-for revival failed to materialize, Egypt’s economy actually is significantly worse-off, plagued by a climate of chaos and uncertainty that is causing investors to withdraw their capital from the country, leading to the ongoing devaluation of the Pound and an even greater unemployment problem than the one that significantly contributed to the Revolution in the first place.

Unless the new government quickly enacts real job-creating economic reforms, the Revolution’s fate itself is in jeopardy, as popular support for a return to Mubarak-style authoritarianism, which to many Egyptians at least had the benefit of bringing a degree of certainty and stability, will continue to grow......

Judging Anonymous Tweets: The Case of @Mujtahidd

The Arabist,  February 27th 2012

An important ongoing development in the Arabic Twittosphere is the surging followership of a Saudi user known as @Mujtahidd. With daily tweets ranging from sensational rumors and gossip about the Royal Family to credible-sounding inside information about the Kingdom’s politics, he has quickly gained 925,000 followers – nearly half during the last six months, and is becoming one of the most followed feeds not just in Saudi Arabia, but increasingly the wider Middle East.

The caveat, however, is that Mujtahidd operates anonymously and there is no way to verify the accuracy of many of his dramatic claims, which poses a challenge for commentators looking to Twitter to glean insights into the region’s politics.

While some may dismiss the information coming from such a site as unreliable --- social media’s version of the National Enquirer --  a close survey over time shows that, in balance, they can offer good insights into the politics of closed and heavily censored countries like Saudi Arabia....

Nitaqat: Towards a Saudi New Deal

The US-Saudi Trade Group, December 14th 2012

An odd feature of ongoing media commentary on reform in the context of the Arab Spring is the neglect of the economic domain.  As if economic problems were not a major cause of the uprisings, and fixing them not a critical part of the solution.

At any of the major Middle East policy blogs and on the Twittersphere, politics completely dominates the discussion.   One almost gets the impression that the long-term stability and prosperity of Egypt depends upon the drafting of a flawless constitution or finding the perfect theoretical balance between Presidential and Military power, and not solving or at least mitigating the massive unemployment problem that has not changed one bit under the new government......

If positive change can only take the form of holding elections or writing new constitutions, than on that basis not much is happening in the Kingdom. But if we take a broader view, and consider that the economic domain is equally important, the situation looks different, especially with Nitaqat, an aggressive Saudi government policy begun in the summer of 2011 and aimed at solving the unemployment problem among Saudi nationals by decreasing the availability of cheap foreign labor.

While rarely receiving more than a superficial mention in Western media, Nitaqat is a serious attempt to adjust the employee/employer balance in Saudi Arabia and is, in its own way, as critical to the Kingdom’s long-term social and political well-being as anything occurring across the Red Sea in Egypt.

Fixing Saudi Unemployment: More than Just Creating Jobs

The Arabist, November 17th 2012

A Great Tuesday Washington Post piece by Kevin Sullivan on Saudi women and unemployment.   The part at the end on Saudi labor policy and the two-tier labor force is critical.

What Sullivan doesn’t address in much detail though is how the presence of so many foreign workers has distorted wages in the private sector, and causes the unemployment problem to persist in a country where there are literally millions of jobs that Saudis could be working.....

The Virtues of a Low(er) Tech Future in Egypt

The Arabist, June 6th 2012

There's a growing school of thought that promotion of entrepreneurship is an effective solution to the socio-economic problems facing many Arab countries, especially Egypt. In Jobs@Arabia.com Thomas Friedman heaped praise on Oassis500, a high-tech accelerator in Jordan that provides startup money and training to budding internet companies....

Friedman and company’s approach is sound.  However, what should not be overdone is the implicit assumption that “startup” means (or should mean) “tech” and especially “internet company.” Virtually every article covering this trend in the Arab world focuses exclusively on web-based companies.  Certainly, they have a place, but an equal, if not greater focus should be on the development of new lower-tech, labor-intensive firms, because they are more likely to make an impact in addressing Egypt’s un and underemployment problems......

In Saudi Arabia, Need for Continuity Makes Stability Likely

World Politics Review,  June 25 2012

The sudden death last week  of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Nayyif, the heir apparent to King Abdullah, caught many by surprise. But the latest royal shuffle, which sees Prince Salman becoming the new crown prince, and the even bigger transition expected to occur in the near future given the poor health of the 88-year-old king will likely feature far greater continuity and stability than the political transformations occurring in Egypt and other Arab countries....

Salafis: Why the Surprise?

The Arabist, 12 December 2011

One of the major themes I’ve noticed in the media after the Salafi al-Nour party won 25% of the votes in the first round of Egyptian elections was a surprise (or as in this week’s In Translation – anger). Yet their success shouldn’t be considered a surprise. Here are four points to ponder:

(1) Most popular T.V. stations to 25% of the votes isn’t a huge jump:

In 2008 Ahmed Hamam and I talked to dozens of Egyptian Salafis, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and various journalists and academics for a study on Salafi Satellite TV Stations in Egypt, published in Arab Media and Society in April 2009.

While precise Nielsen-style statistics don’t exist in Egypt, the general consensus was that Salafi-oriented TV stations such as Al-Nass and Al-Rahma, featuring charismatic preachers like Mohamed Hassan, were drawing higher ratings than any other TV stations in Egypt. So the evidence of the popularity of Salafism has been clear for years.

(2) Salafis were never against politics in theory:

Critics have accused Salafis of hypocrisy for entering electoral politics post-Revolution. An accusation that assumes Salafis were somehow “quietist” or against participation in politics on principle. This is not true; their discourse has always been “political” and entering electoral politics is a logical post-Mubarak step......