Better to douse one’s head in a boiling pot than curry the favor of a wicked king.
Three years have passed since the Arab Spring wafted transient hopes of democracy across the Maghreb. Through the oft jubilant protests centered in Tahrir Square, Egyptians inspired themselves into believing they could supplant the sclerotic dictatorship that had ruled their nation for decades. They would instill modern democracy in this ancient land. The Nile itself would be watered and renewed by the outpouring of the popular will.
The Libyan trek quickly turned less irenic. Gaddafi would brook no replication of Tahrir in his land. Yet, his opponents would not be easily suppressed. Aided by an incongruous, informal alliance of Western nations and itinerant jihadists, the Libyan opposition would graduate from demonstrations and protests to armed insurgency. The nation descended into grim civil war in vain hope that the exit from this plunge into darkness would lead to the light of democracy.
After three years of taking different paths, Egypt and Libya have returned closely to where they started. In an election characterized by languid voter turnout, the Egyptian people resigned themselves to a return to governance civilian in form but military in soul and substance.
In Libya, the fight against Gaddafi was portrayed as one pitting democracy against authoritarian order. With Gaddafi gone, order has vanished with him. Yet, democracy also has failed to arrive. The place has turned into a house madder than it was when ruled by the alleged madman. Libya is no longer governed by his mercurial spirit. Though a desert nation, it now operates by the law of the jungle. Factions and factions within factions now fight battles within battles and wars within wars. Tripoli is the capital but the writ of government extends no further than the buildings it occupies. Libya is not so much a nation but a patchwork of tiny fiefdoms competing for local supremacy. Benghazi would be an independent city state except that it is now too anomic to be considered a cohesive entity. Amidst the confusion, a renegade former general/present warlord has launched battle against the government he vowed to serve as well as against the contumacious, anti-government jihadists in Benghazi.
What happened to these nations pains the heart but should not surprise the mind. In both instances, reformers fell prey to the unintended consequences of their incomplete and idealistic exertions. They recognized neither the enormity nor complexity of the task they assumed. For the truly democratic reformers, august motives were betrayed by a superficial political strategy evidencing a startling lack of depth about the nature of their societies and how to reform them.
At a most fundamental level, they failed to understand that suppressive government does not retreat. It responds to reformist challenge with doubled force. Every stab at reform begets conservative backlash. If the reformer is unprepared for the political fusillade to come, he will melt into a position inferior to that which he sought to change.
Because of this strategic weakness, reformers gave themselves over domestic and international forces stronger and more cunning than they at the craft of power wrangling. As such, they became pawns in the game they initiated. Tragically, their exertions have blown back in their faces like wildfire captured by an ill wind. That which they sought to change has reestablished itself as if a wall of crumbling plaster reassembled itself into reinforced brick.
In Egypt, the reformers thought all they needed was to oust Mubarak. They trounced Mubarak but what they now have may have taken them further away from genuine democracy. Mubarak was an increasingly frail octogenarian whose life force had diminished. Approaching the end of his days, he dreamed of dynastic succession; he hoped to place his son in the seat. This would have rankled senior members of the military, splitting the officer class between those supporting and those opposing the dynastic option.
Instead of being faced with the weakened son of Mubarak, the missteps of Egyptian reformers have made it possible for the reincarnation of Mubarak through the presidential election of former defense Minister Fattah el-Sisi. The new president has the energy, scope and ambition of Mubarak in his prime. The new leader may actually be a tad more ruthless and cunning. While the sun was setting on Mubarak, it is but high noon for el-Sisi. Take it for granted that he believes elections need not be democratic; to him, they are modern-day coronations of a leader already anointed in the most old fashioned of ways: by brute power allied with established money.
He has it in mind that he will win every election he enters and that he can easily shred constitutional term limits as easily as one can shred the paper upon which these restrictions have been solemnly inscribed. This man envisions himself as leader for decades to come. In effect, the vernal tumult ignited a process of alternating hope and disappointment that would bring the nation full circle. It was as if Egypt had gotten rid of their version of an aging Ivan the Terrible to replace him with a virile Stalin. This is worse than a bad bargain for it was paid for and made possible by collective activity and sacrifices intended to steer the nation in the opposite direction. Intentions are no substitute for wisdom in strategy; once in the field of actual struggle, belief in the rightness of cause is less valuable than political cunning.
Reformers should have targeted the military as an institution. Their mistake was to view Mubarak as the problem instead of seeing him as the mere personification of a deeper malady. Thus, they concluded that by ejecting Mubarak, they solved their governance problem. This is akin to believing that by lopping off the crest of a wave one has controlled the entire ocean.
Because they failed to realize the limitations of individual power, they came to underestimate the intransigence of institutional power. It was not so much that they misfired but that they took accurate aim at the wrong target, wasting all their finite ammunition on minor target.
The real nemesis was the military’s role in government. Pull the military from government and Mubarak would have folded. However, removing Mubarak did not mean the military would fold. In fact, it was the military that finally told Mubarak to walk the plank as he had become a detriment to their continuity.
To them, removing Mubarak was not surrender. It represented a tactical retreat as the prelude to counterattack at the propitious moment.
The so-called reformers were outwitted by military officers they considered their intellectual inferiors. What this shows is that the politics learned in the classroom is a different animal from the one that walks the street. Political science is a fiction not to be heavily relied upon. The contest of competing subjective human thoughts, emotions and ambitions can never be reduced to formulaic expression. In actual politics, we discount the academician’s fluffy words and laboratory observations for they reduce complex real-life figures to lab rats which teach us very little. To master the task of reform, we take our cues, not from the lab, but from those who understand and flourish in the badlands that comprise the true topography of actual politics.
The military cunningly kept itself intact as the fulcrum of Egyptian politics by taking a backseat role momentarily. By doing so, it wedged itself between the secular reformers and the Muslim Brotherhood. This caused the two civilian camps to become estranged. When the Muslim Brotherhood won the election, it garnered the majority of the wider public but it was a minority government in terms of support among the political elite. Thus, it had to bend and rely on the military in order to have two of the three political groupings on its side. Imperceptible to the reformers, the military had become the indispensable powerbroker between the two opposing civilian camps. When an arbiter becomes indispensable, he ceases being a broker. He assumes another name: master.
The time to strike came when popularity of President Morsi and the Brotherhood hit low ebb. The military pulled its support from the Brotherhood and promised to ally with the secularists. The military deceived the secularists into believing the secularists would be allowed to take the helm from the Brotherhood. The secularists joined the military to harness the Brotherhood. Here was their great error.
They failed to realize the Brotherhood was the second most powerful group behind the military. Sound long-term strategy called for a rapprochement between the Brotherhood and secularists against the military. Two and three combine to contain number one. This was not to happen. What occurred was three joined one to impale two. The military achieved what it wanted. It would have had a difficult time taking down the Brotherhood without the implicit support of the secularists.
With the Brotherhood checkmated, the military simply ignored and walked over the secularists; by themselves, the secularists constituted an insufficient threat. The secularists had been maneuvered to where they stood alone for they had betrayed the democratic mandate given the Brotherhood. They military was free to reclaim what their exalted position and they wasted little time transforming el-Sisi into the second coming of Mubarak. In the cycle of earth’s seasons, spring follows winter. In Egyptian politics, it was winter that replaced spring.
In Libya, things were less convoluted but also less home-grown. If left solely a Libyan undertaking, the uprising would have been extinguished in weeks. Gaddafi would still be in power. Mali would not have come to increased turmoil and Boko Haram would not be so endowed with lethal materiel. However, foreign jihadists came by land, joining in informal but effective alliance with Western power by air and sea. The effort against Gaddafi was hijacked from its domestic authors to largely become a foreign affair. Thus Gaddafi’s fate was sealed as was Libya’s. The entire nation would be reduced to a brawl.
Libya is now an unalloyed mess. Governance was by the barrel of a gun or not at all. The nation has become a festival for warlords and misery for the rest. Enter former general Khalifa Haftar. Once a Gaddafi aide, Haftar fled to America. He lived there for years until returning to participate in the drive against Gaddafi.
It would be naïve to think his arrival and quick return to prominence is unconnected with his stay in America. The general likely has amiable connections with American counterparts. Thus, it is unlikely he has embarked on his two-front battle — mutiny against government and fight against the jihadists — without the backing of those in control of Washington’s geo-political and military strategy. Haftar may ultimately prove to be his own king but for now he will spend significant time as a pawn of others. In effect, Libya went through its dark sufferings just to replace one strongman with another. The only significant difference is that while Gaddafi was the self-styled apostle of African unity and a thorn in the West’s side, Haftar is a client of the West who will likely prove a thorn in the side of his people for years to come.
Because both el-Sisi and Haftar are conservative militarists with no political ideology beyond the lust for power, the West feels comfortable with them as with Mubarak, Pinochet and those of that ilk. Even Israel applauded the election of el-Sisi. For Tel Aviv, el-Sisi promises a return to business as usual after the rather uncomfortable Muslim Brotherhood interregnum.
Sadness drapes both nations. Despite the hard work and sacrifice, reform has been vetoed by retrogression. The situation in both nations shows the difficulty of exacting reform. Not only must reformers have a visionary idea, they must have the political acumen to see it through to completion. They must have the wisdom to outwit rival political forces but also the ability to garner support among society’s undecided and ambivalent. This does not come by happenstance nor are all these gifts likely to be deposited in one person.
Necessary are thorough organization, discipline and correct strategy drawing clear distinction between tactical goals and strategic objectives. So is a bit of luck. Even here, fortune is more apt to shine on those better prepared to take of its advantage. Luck and fortune detest squandering themselves on the unready. As such, those who embark on reform are obligated not to underestimate the task they assume. To do so, is to place the nation they love on a weak and bending limb. If that limb breaks, the nation may find itself in a condition worse than when the climb to reform began. At the end of the day, the attempt to climb to a better place should never land us in a deeper pit.
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