Or, more accurately, levels of popular opposition leading to reform. Reform has long been blocked due to resistance from conservative forces, and most observers seem to have concluded that it will occur slowly or have expressed pessimism, but the protests in Iran make it reasonable to inquire whether some of these calculations need to be changed. Is mass protest mainly a product of Iranian conditions, or do such conditions exist more widely?
Iran’s opposition movement is not unique within the Middle East. Similar tendencies and their underlying causes exist elsewhere; women’s oppression, lack of human rights, unemployment, and authoritarianism to name some of the main ones, are common throughout. As a result many of the same political dramas are playing themselves out, for example in Egypt, as in Iran. Many of the players look the same: authoritarians and Islamists, reformers and democratisers, though in Egypt their place in the pecking order is slightly different. There it is the military which is in charge, and the Islamists who are in opposition, though the latter is also split between hardliners and reformists, as in Iran.
One of the factors which has traditionally held back popular struggle in the Middle East has been lack of an informed populace, brought about in part due to heavy controls on information and education by authoritarian regimes. Illiteracy and lack of information have also added to the dead weight of conservatism and passivity, and has meant that it has been a great deal harder for people to oppose authority and challenge the official version of events. Another important barrier has been social conservatism created by living in an agricultural society with extended families as conduits for the dissemination of information and perceptions about the wider society which were often more conservative than in urban areas where wider influences exist.
In recent years there have been improvements in education and communication throughout the region. Women’s education has become the norm, while news services such as Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, BBC Middle East service, and the internet, have made a less parochial and more broadly-based level of information and communication possible. It was on Al Arabiya that president Obama gave his first interview after taking office, aimed at the Muslim world. Today it is a safe bet that the people of the region know who Obama is and what he stands for. It is also the case that people throughout the Middle East are able to follow the events in Iran as they unfold, which means that the opposition movement there will now be more easily able to influence events elsewhere.
As a measure of how influential the new media can be, Iran’s ban on foreign media during recent protests included the representatives of Islamic countries, not just western ones. This is instructive in that it shows that regimes themselves no longer have a monopoly of information, nor can they rely on the Arab or other Islamic media to censor events; government media now has to compete with global players, which, despite drawbacks and prejudices, will get out the news regardless, which in this case it did and continues to do.
One of the factors for change in Egypt as in other countries both Sunni and Shia, Arab and Persian, are the demographic changes which have occurred in recent years. Cairo is a city of some seventeen million people, one of the largest cities on earth. It is in this vibrant city, which as in many major cities is a melting pot, that people from rural areas come face to face with modern influences, which often means that they are more able to develop the means to question authority effectively, and to join with other like-minded people free from traditional constraints. Egyptian conditions have consequently given rise to a spectrum of popular protest movements including those struggling for democracy (Kifaya and Youth for Change), others representing women, and has given rise to unrest among working-class people wanting improvements in material conditions.
Popular protests can from time to time be witnessed in Lebanon, Iraq and a number of other countries. In Lebanon a million people demonstrated against Syrian influence in the aftermath of the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005. In Iraq enthusiasm for democratic elections has been expressed by voters who turned out to vote in large numbers despite threats of violence made by extremists.
In the future, spontaneous expressions of dissatisfaction should not be discounted in cities such as Cairo, which could rock the elites and begin to change the political landscape. The expectations surrounding the possible candidacy of Mohammed El Baradei the Nobel laureate and former head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, who would like to challenge president Mubarak in the next national election, could begin to create a scenario similar to Iran, as support for change crystallises around him.
Hardline secular and Islamist forces seem to be providing fewer answers, and dissatisfaction is growing. It isn’t possible to tell what will happen, except that the emergent tendencies will likely continue developing because of the failures of those wielding influence and power. It is also the case, as indicated above, that while strong conservative tendencies remain, and the old structures hold things back, new social forces have come into being, such as increasingly modern- minded women and new middle and working classes. It is possible that these new forces, perhaps in concert, may be able to bring about change. Evaluating the prospects for change is treacherous because of the possibility of unforeseen events. Few would have predicted the rapid rise of Iran’s opposition movement, which burst out in the form of mass protests in Tehran last summer.
The changes will have to come about from within, but when they do it is important that the world be prepared for them, because a reaction to them will almost certainly be required in this interconnected world. The minimum we can do is make sure that we do no harm. We will have to decide how to treat those who oppress their own people, and respond to threats to our security and legitimate interests. The importance of the latter is often overlooked, as it may seem obvious and unrelated, or even harmful to those who need our help most. There is a tendency to lean over backwards by some, to avoid interfering in the affairs of other nations in order to provide a counter-weight to interventionist thinking and assuage the guilt of an imperialist past. This is understandable, but it is important to avoid leaning too far in this direction. The result may be stifling to the new forces for change. Where we find ourselves under threat from aggressors, we will often discover that those ranged against us are also a threat to their own people. Dictators tend towards paranoia and have a tendency to lash out at outsiders who they need to make into scapegoats. If we have the courage to protect ourselves, we will often be doing a service to the cause of reform as well. If we fail to do so, hardline forces will be emboldened and strengthened. Even if it is only individual voices which speak out, it will be of help to those who cannot speak for themselves. Individual dissent is the most important bulwark against tyranny, and speaking out in protest is always a threat to the rule of tyrants.