Buried beneath the news’ cycle of the Arab Spring
is a much overlooked and potentially revolutionary fact – the real
“spring” under way across the lands of the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant
and North Africa is not Arab.
Say what you
will about the Arab Spring. But so far, the most remarkable and
potentially disruptive developments of 18 months of uprisings is the
return of ethnic, tribal and religious identities to the political stage
as a challenge to the notion of a uniform Arab world. The truth is that
the Arab world is an artificial concoction, the illegitimate child of
the incestuous union between European colonialism and Arab nationalism.
When, after World War I, France and Great Britain carved out the Ottoman
Empire into protectorates, they largely ignored the principle of
peoples’ self-determination affirmed by then-US president Woodrow
Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the only exceptions being, possibly, the
short-lived Druze state under French rule in Syria, and the reluctant
fulfilment of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine.
Arab nationalism fought colonial rule and
contested the artificially drawn boundaries of the post-1918 regional
order. But Arab nationalists disregarded the rights of non-Arab
minorities, which they vociferously claimed for themselves. The Arab
regimes that came to life in the age of Egypt’s pan-Arab nationalist
ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, spoke of self-determination. Their followers
believed that the boundaries separating Arab-speaking peoples from the
Atlas to the Gulf were imposed by outside powers – artificial and
unjust. Yet, they never dared recognize that their call for unity was as
artificial as the divisions it sought to overcome. Once in power, they
discriminated, persecuted, and often expelled minorities. Those who
remained often suffered forceful Arabization.
At
most, religious minorities enjoyed protection – the same type of
benevolent second-class status that pre-modern Ottoman rule had granted
them in the past. Yet, this protection was fragile – their rights rested
on a ruler’s benevolence, the flimsiest of guarantees – as Armenians,
Bahai’s, Copts and Jews have each in turn painfully learned. And it
never extended to national claims: the mass graves of Kurds in Iraq and
the genocide of Sudan’s Animist and Christian peoples bear witness to
this.
Soviet
paratroopers on a light tank in downtown Prague during the Prague
Spring in 1968 (photo credit: public domain via Wikipedia)
The
fall of tyrants has now created an opening. The transition to democracy
hangs in the balance in Egypt and Tunisia. Syria’s dictator is still
clinging to power. Arab monarchies have weathered the storm so far –
though not all are in tranquil waters yet. But under the radar, the
unthinkable is beginning to happen.
Associating
the word “spring” with with democratic change is an old habit of
history: the wave of European revolutions that briefly shocked Europe’s
authoritarian empires was called the “Spring of Nations.” So was, 120 years later, the Prague Spring
of 1968, and, more recently, the 1989 peaceful revolutions against
Communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe. Yet, for all the emphasis
that these events put on individual freedoms rooted in classical liberal
demands for citizen’s rights, many of these revolutions were about
national self-determination – national uprisings against multi-ethnic
empires that, through authoritarian rule, trampled both individual
rights and national identities.
With the
fall of Arab tyrannical rule, something similar is now happening in the
Arab regional order. If Arab states transition to democracy but forget
their minorities’ collective rights, they will further ignite
centrifugal forces.
Take the Kurds. History
had been cruel to them: their aspirations for a nation-state were
dashed at the 1919 Versailles Conference. Their homeland was carved out
between four countries – Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey – whose virulent
nationalism has been equally hell-bent on denying them even their most
basic rights. But since 1991, thanks to a Western-imposed no-fly zone
over Iraqi Kurdistan, a free and independent Kurdistan – a state in all
but name – has slowly emerged. Now, with unrest in Syria affecting local
Kurds, the temptation to break the barriers of Arab nationalism will be
strong.
Nor is Kurdistan an exception; it may just be a harbinger of things to come.
Last
year, the non-Arab South Sudan finally freed itself from the yoke of
oppression of its northern Arab rulers. South Sudan, of course, hangs in
the balance; Iraqi Kurdistan remains formally part of Iraq, and most
Kurds remain under the yoke of oppression in Syria, Turkey and Iran. But
elsewhere, as centralized Arab regimes give way to the unknown, there
is an opening.
In Somalia – a member of the
Arab League – the former British colonial domains of Puntland and
Somaliland have enfranchised themselves from the southern chaos of
Mogadishu and its troubled environs. In Libya – a country held together
by force and now no longer beholden to its dictator – being Arab or
Muslim is not the determining factor for political identity and national
self-governance. Syria — if its murderous ruler Bashar Assad finally
capitulates to the demands of its people — may follow the same path.
Elsewhere, in Central Africa, the Tuareg populations of Northern Mali
have proclaimed independence and established a new state – Azawad. It is
on the edges of the Arab world, but it may encourage breakaway
movements across North Africa, wherever Berber tribes suffer from Arab
discrimination.
The demise of the Arab
state is not assured; even when it comes, it could be every bit as
bloody and messy as ethnic conflicts in the post-communist order of the
Balkans and the Caucasus. But the Arab Spring offers a promise: freedom
for the non-Arab ethnic groups and the non-Muslim religious minorities
of the Middle East.
It is a promise the
West should embrace. For replacing an unjust order with one that
continues to disregard minorities and their rights is never going to
bring stability, peace and prosperity to those lands.
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