The conflict inherent between policy and principle continues to this day
The international community has been compromised by the revolution sweeping the Arab world. In three uncertain weeks, the United States vacillated from urging stability to shore up a strategic ally in Hosni Mubarak to cheering his overthrow. France trod the same path in Tunisia. Happily, the foreign minister Mich�le Alliot-Marie, whose first reaction to the uprising was to offer Ben Ali France's superior knowledge in riot control, has finally resigned. But her family's involvement with the ancien regime (her parents had shares in a property company owned by a businessman close to the regime) provided its own morality play.
Few were disinterested observers. When it came to the crunch, such as organising the interrogation under torture of jihadis picked up in Pakistan, the CIA, among others, traded with the darkest elements of Mubarak's regime being denounced with such ardour today. Russia and China, both of whom have much to fear from spontaneous demonstrations by their own people, have fared little better.
The conflict inherent between policy and principle continues to this day. While the world's attention has been focused on a mad colonel's dying days, Libyan troops are not alone in firing on unarmed demonstrators. After a mass demonstration in another Tahrir Square, this time in Baghdad, Iraq's security forces detained 300 people, among them prominent journalists, artists and intellectuals, some of whom were later beaten up or tortured in custody. At least 29 died nationwide in Iraq's "day of rage". Rather than denounce an ally in Nouri al-Maliki, whose coalition government Washington toiled hard and for many months to create, the US embassy in Baghdad played down the violence.
Three lessons should be drawn from the revolutions taking place in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. The first is that they belong to the people who made them. The Libyans, Egyptians and Tunisians have made enormous personal sacrifices to get this far, humbling eyewitnesses with their determination and heroism. They do not want, nor have they yet sought foreign intervention. The ownership of change across the Middle East does not, however, make international action irrelevant. The vote in the United Nations to impose travel and asset sanctions on Gaddafi and his entourage broke new ground for the international support it mustered, helped not least by the Arab League, the African Union and support from Libya's own US mission, which defected en masse. It is unlikely to continue, but the process of rediscovering the benefits of genuine international coalitions and institutions like the human rights council is a healthy one.
The second lesson is that these revolutions have only just begun, and the task of clearing out old faces is still work in progress. Tunisia ousted its second leader in as many months when Mohamed Ghannouchi resigned as prime minister after three days of protest. With the US and France pressing for the formation of a model which would absorb leading members of the old ruling party, the RCD, in a new democratic party, the Tunisian street is having none of it. They want a complete change, not people like Ghannouchi back in new guise. Whether a leaderless revolution will be able to create its own leadership without fissuring is another matter. But it is clear what the ambition is.
The third lesson is that the process of remaking politics will occur independently of outside influence, Islamist or western. While the Egyptian military will still need US aid, the government that finally emerges after free elections may indeed be more independent. Western policy in the Middle East will have little option but to adjust to a new reality. It will be in no position to dictate terms. When these regimes died, their role as unsavoury, but ultimately useful clients died with them.
Liberal-Conservative coalition Facebook Nuclear weapons Middle East Censorship Shaun Bartlett
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