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Default Arab Uprising, A Glimmer Of Hope For A New Beginning In Middle East

Arab Uprising, A Glimmer Of Hope For A New Beginning In Middle East


Introduction

The Arab uprising is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world. Since 18 December 2010 there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and civil war in Libya resulting in the fall of its regime, civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen, major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman, and minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara.
The series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa has become known as the "Arab Spring and sometimes as the "Arab Spring and Winter "Arab Awakening" or "Arab Uprisings" even though not all participants in protests identify as Arab. It was sparked by the first protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December 2010 following Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest of municipal corruption and ill treatment by a local lady municipal officer. With the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest struck Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen, and then spread to other countries. The largest, most organized demonstrations have often occurred on a "day of rage", usually Friday after noon prayers. The protests have also triggered similar unrest outside the region.
As of September, 2011, demonstrations have resulted in the overthrow of two heads of state: Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on 14 January following the Tunisian revolution protests, and in Egypt, PresidentHosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011, after 18 days of massive protests, ending his 30-year presidency. During this period of regional unrest, several leaders announced their intentions to step down at the end of their current terms. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced that he would not seek re-election in 2015, as did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose term ends in 2014, although there have been increasingly violent demonstrations demanding his immediate resignation. Protests in Jordan have also caused the resignation of the government resulting in former Prime Minister and Ambassador to IsraelMarouf al-Bakhit being appointed prime minister by King Abdullah and tasked with forming a new government. Another leader, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, announced on 23 April that he would step down within 30 days in exchange for immunity, a deal the Yemeni opposition informally accepted on 26 April, Saleh then reneged on the deal, prolonging the Yemeni uprising. Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi has refused to step down, causing a civil war between pro-Gadaffi loyalists and anti-Gadaffi rebels continued. Rebels have captured most of the Libyan cities including capital Tripoli with the active military assistance of NATO especially by UK and France.

Modus operandi

The protests have shared techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and internet censorship.

Background

Numerous factors have led to the protests, including issues such as dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, government corruption (demonstrated by Wiki leaks diplomatic cables), economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the population. The catalysts for the revolts in all Northern African and Persian Gulf countries have been the concentration of wealth in the hands of autocrats in power for decades, insufficient transparency of its redistribution, corruption, and especially the refusal of the youth to accept the status quo. Increasing food prices have also been a significant factor, as they involve threats to food security worldwide and prices that approach levels of the 2007–2008 world food price crises. Amnesty International singled out Wikileaks release of US diplomatic cables as a catalyst for the revolts. These events will continue to be magnified and accelerated by the growing role of social media. Indeed, the Arab Media Influence Report recently released by the Dubai-based News Group notes a number of significant trends:
“There are 65 million Internet users in the Arab world and the number is expected to grow to 80 million by 2012. In percentage terms, 30.8 percent of the population is online, while the global average is 28.7 percent. In August 2010, Arabic became the fastest growing language on Face book. There are 17 million Face book users in the region, larger than the number of newspaper subscribers.”

While by no means the only factor, social media will surely play a critical role as the dynamic change launched by the Tunisian fruit seller continues to play out across the region.
In recent decades rising living standards and literacy rates, as well as the increased availability of higher education, have resulted in an improved human development index in the affected countries. The tension between rising aspirations and a lack of government reform may have been a contributing factor in all of the protests.Many of the internet-savvy youth of these countries have studied in the West, where autocrats and absolute monarchies are considered anachronisms. A university professor of Oman, Al-Najma Zidjaly referred to this upheaval as youthquake.
Tunisia and Egypt, the first to witness major uprisings, differ from other North African and Middle Eastern nations such as Algeria and Libya in that they lack significant oil revenue, and were thus unable to make concessions to calm the masses.

Impacts Of Arab Uprising

Political impact

Arab uprising will have deep rooted impact in Middle East and North Africa both politically and economically. As we know that in most of the countries of Middle East monarch and autocrats have the rule. The uprisings mark a watershed event, with the Arab world irrevocably changed. Essentially, the social contract governing the relationship between Arab ruling regimes and their populations is in tatters. The contract’s fundamental precept demanded popular acquiescence to regime control the suppression of their aspirations and muzzling of their voice in exchange for government guarantees of decent living conditions – the provision of jobs, housing, affordable food prices, education and health care. Over the past decade, if not longer, the social contract’s foundations began to crack. Deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and a yearning for freedom across the Arab world underscored the core flaws of this arrangement. The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia as well as popular protests across the region are the most dramatic evidence of this new Arab awakening.
No one not even the protest organizers themselves predicted that the demonstrations would lead to the downfall of such deeply-entrenched regimes. Western governments often believed Arab regime arguments that their governments represented stability and a bulwark against either chaos or Islamist extremism. Meanwhile, many Western analysts perhaps overestimated the strength of autocratic regimes and failed to give enough credence to the “popular” side of the Arab social contract. Riddled by pervasive corruption and unable to provide even the most basic popular needs, regimes in Tunis and Cairo were ultimately brought down by their inability to fulfill their end of the bargain. Going forward, it is essential to understand that the Arab grassroots have been empowered. They are now a key factor in the region’s power equations and can no longer be ignored. Power no longer emanates solely from the top, but also resides at the popular level.

The Us-Saudi Axis

The ongoing uprisings in the Arab world today, as is clear to all observers, do not distinguish between republics and monarchies. Indeed, in addition to the republics, demonstrations have been ongoing in Morocco, Jordan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia (and more modestly in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates), despite the brutal suppression of the major Bahraini uprising by a combined mercenary force dispatched by the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council led by Saudi Arabia.
The situation in Arab countries today is characterized as much by the counter-revolution sponsored by the Saudi regime and the United States as it is by the uprisings of the Arab peoples against US-sponsored dictatorial regimes.
While the US-Saudi axis was caught unprepared for the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, they quickly made contingency plans to counter the uprisings elsewhere, especially in Bahrain and Oman, but also in Jordan and Yemen, as well as take control of the uprisings in Libya (at first) and later in Syria. Attempts to take control of the Yemeni uprising have had mixed results so far.
Part of the US-Saudi strategy has been to strengthen religious sectarianism, especially hostility to shiism, in the hope of stemming the tide of the uprisings. The situation today is one of a struggle between the formidable US-Saudi axis, which is the main anti-democratic force in the region, and the pro-democracy uprisings.
The US-Saudi strategy is two-fold: massive repression of those Arab uprisings that can be defeated, and co-optation of those that could not be. How successful the second part will be depends on how co-optable the pro-democracy forces prove to be.

Economic impact

Political turmoil in the Middle East has powerful economic and financial implications, particularly as it increases the risk of stagflation, a lethal combination of slowing growth and sharply rising inflation. Indeed, should stagflation emerge, there is a serious risk of a double-dip recession for a global economy that has barely emerged from its worst crisis in decades.
Severe unrest in the Middle East has historically been a source of oil-price spikes, which in turn have triggered three of the last five global recessions. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 caused a sharp increase in oil prices, leading to the global stagflation of 1974-1975. The Iranian revolution in 1979 led to a similar stagflationary increase in oil prices, which culminated in the recession of 1980-1981. And Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 led to a spike in oil prices at a time when a US banking crisis was already tipping America into recession.
We don’t know yet whether political contagion in the Middle East will spread to other countries. The turmoil may yet be contained and recede, sending oil prices back to lower levels. But there is a serious chance that the uprisings will spread, destabilizing Bahrain, Algeria, Oman, Jordan, Yemen, and eventually even Saudi Arabia.
Even before the recent Middle East political shocks, oil prices had risen above $80-$90 a barrel, an increase driven not only by energy-thirsty emerging-market economies, but also by non-fundamental factors: a wall of liquidity chasing assets and commodities in emerging markets, owing to near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing in advanced economies; momentum and herding behavior; and limited and inelastic oil supplies. If the threat of supply disruptions spreads beyond Libya, even the mere risk of lower output may sharply increase the “fear premium” via precautionary stockpiling of oil by investors and final users.
The latest increases in oil prices and the related increases in other commodity prices, especially food – imply several unfortunate consequences (even leaving aside the risk of severe civil unrest).
First, inflationary pressure will grow in already overheating emerging market economies, where oil and food prices represent up to two-thirds of the consumption basket. Given weak demand in slow-growing advanced economies, rising commodity prices may lead only to a small first-round effect on headline inflation there, with little second-round impact on core inflation. But advanced countries will not emerge unscathed.
Indeed, the second risk posed by higher oil prices a terms-of-trade and disposable income shock to all energy and commodity importers will hit advanced economies especially hard, as they have barely emerged from recession and are still experiencing an anemic recovery.
The third risk is that rising oil prices reduce investor confidence and increase risk aversion, leading to stock-market corrections that have negative wealth effects on consumption and capital spending. Business and consumer confidence are also likely to take a hit, further undermining demand.
If oil prices rise much further towards the peaks of 2008, the advanced economies will slow sharply; many might even slip back into recession. Even if prices remain at current levels for most of the year, global growth will slow and inflation will rise.

Role of US, France and UK

US have a deep rooted political and economic interest in Middle East and North Africa. He has a strong military presence in Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean to protect its energy interests. Since World War II, but more diligently since the mid 1950s, the United States has followed two simultaneous strategies to exercise its control over the Arab peoples across Arab countries. The first, and the one most relevant to Arabs, was based on the early US recognition and realization (like Britain, France, and Italy before it) that Arabs, like all other peoples worldwide, wanted democracy and freedom and would struggle for them in every possible way.
For the United States, this necessitated the establishment of security and repressive apparatuses in Arab countries, which the US would train, fund, and direct in order to suppress these democratic desires and efforts in support of dictatorial regimes whose purpose has always been and continues to be the defense of US security and business interests in the region.
These interests consist principally in securing and maintaining US control of the oil resources of the region, ensuring profits for American business, and strengthening the Israeli settler-colony.Much of this was of course propelled by the beginning of the Cold War and the US strategy to suppress all forms of real and imagined communist-leaning forces around the world, which included any and all democratic demands for change in the region.
This strategy, which was formalised in the Eisenhower Doctrine issued in 1957, continues through the present. The Eisenhower Doctrine, issued on 5 January 1957, as a speech by the US president, declared the Soviet Union, not Israel or Western-supported regional dictatorships, as the enemy of the people of the Middle East. US will continue playing its role in Middle East for its economic and political interests in one way or other.
The French and the British have continued to play important neo-colonial roles in the region, economically, militarily, and in the realm of security "cooperation". They have strengthened their position by increasing their security and diplomatic "assistance" to their allies among Arab dictators. Now they have find an opportunity to reestablish their base in Middle East like US to secure pursue their economic, military and political interests in form of supporting the Rebels against the Qadafi in Libya.

Conclusion

On a systemic level, the Arab uprising will create a new political and economic reality in the Middle East and transform the regional balance of power. While Western influence in the region will inevitably decline as a result, the Arab revolutions also have an undeniable potential to enhance regional cooperation, reduce the appeal of terrorism and help break the current deadlock in the peace process. The great Arab hope is that Tunisia and Egypt will write a new Revolutionary and Democratic Manifesto for the Arab peoples.

Recommendations

• Media has emerged as a powerful tool in awareness of general public and accountability of governments in their governance.
• Center of power lies with the people.
• Government needs to solve the issues at the gross root level.
• Corruption and accumulation of wealth in few hands can lead to revolution.
• Public satisfaction and democratic system of government are integral components to success.

Analysis:-

The killing of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi after being captured alive by the freedom fighters is a clear violation of international humanitarian law. While the National Transitional Council is set to formally announce Libya’s liberation, NATO has specified that it will end its armed campaign in Libya by October 31.
NATO’s air strikes on Libya have been carried out on the basis of the UN Security Council Resolution 1973. This is a binding Chapter VII resolution, which under Paragraph 4 authorises member states “to take all necessary measures…….to protect civilians and civilian populated areas.” Therefore, NATO utilised this resolution, as the legal basis for carrying out systematic air strikes on Libya for seven months. Many states, including Russia and China, have been extremely critical of the use of force in Libya, and view it as a mechanism to bring about regime change and not to protect the civilians - a norm, which as of yet has not reached the status of customary international law, but is actively promoted by the UN Secretary General’s office.
Thus, presently humanitarian intervention cannot be used as a legal basis to violate the territorial sovereignty of a State and is prohibited under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. It is, therefore, no surprise that the Security Council’s permanent members, like Russia and China, who are themselves confronting secessionist movements, have recently vetoed a draft Security Council resolution on Syria; on the basis of upholding the right to non-interference and in the interest of peace and security in the Middle East. Russia, China and many other emerging powers, feel that if the draft resolution had been approved, then NATO could have misused it to conduct armed operations inside Syria, as it did in Libya, on the pretext of protecting the civilians.
The Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, has recently stated: “The international community is alarmed by statements that compliance with [the] Security Council resolutions in Libya in the NATO interpretation is a model for future actions of NATO in implementing [the] responsibility to protect.”
From a human rights perspective, especially in the light of genocide and crimes against humanity recently committed in Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan, the right of humanitarian intervention seems at first to be the right course of action. However, in practice, such a right is often exercised unilaterally or by a small group of States, acting with ulterior motives, with little regard for the interest of civilian populations, who they claim to be protecting. Many states contradictorily hold the right applicable in certain circumstances and not in other similar situations. Such behaviour is destabilising and retards international peace and security.
Recently, the principle of State sovereignty has confronted numerous challenges. Religion, globalisation, human security and international trade have all tested the norm and have facilitated its evolution in different ways. At times, this transformation has been positive, while, in other circumstances, a contrary determination can be made. However, if humanitarian intervention is to be an acceptable norm of international law, numerous safeguards have to be incorporated in international law before this right can be exercisable. This would most certainly require changes in the UN Charter and the international law governing the use of force.
Furthermore, the necessary mechanisms must be put in place to more effectively determine facts, in order to establish State responsibility. This would, in turn, require a State to contract away other forms of sovereignty that even States, which actively advocate for the right of humanitarian intervention will find difficult to agree to.
If the right of humanitarian intervention was exercisable immediately at the discretion of any State, then ‘humanitarian imperialism’ would, most probably, be the result. Then, the US conducting drones strikes and armed operations deep inside Pakistan to extirpate alleged terrorists and militants on the premise that Pakistan has failed in its responsibility to protect its citizens would become easily justifiable under international law.
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