We've waited for this revolution for years. Other despots should quail
Change
is sweeping though the Middle East and it's the Facebook generation that has
kickstarted it
guardian.co.uk, The Obsever
Saturday 29 January 2011
My birth
at the end of July 1967 makes me a child of the naksa, or setback, as the
Arab defeat during the June 1967 war with Israel is euphemistically known in
Arabic. My parents' generation grew up high on the Arab nationalism that
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brandished in the 1950s. But we
"Children of the Naksa", hemmed in by humiliation, have spent so much of our
lives uncomfortably stepping into pride's large, empty shoes.
But here
now finally are our children – Generation Facebook – kicking aside the
burden of history, determined to show us just how easy it is to tell the
dictator it's time to go.
To
understand the importance of what's going in
Egypt, take the barricades of 1968 (for a good youthful zing), throw them
into a mixer with 1989 and blend to produce the potent brew that the popular
uprising in Egypt is preparing to offer the entire region. It's the most
exciting time of my life.
How did
they do it? Why now? What took so long? These are the questions I face on
news shows scrambling to understand. I struggle with the magnitude of my
feelings of watching as my country revolts and I give into tears when I hear
my father's Arabic-inflected accent in the English of Egyptian men screaming
at television cameras through tear gas: "I'm doing this for my children.
What life is this?"
And
Arabs from the Mashreq to the Maghreb are watching, egging on those
protesters to topple Hosni Mubarak who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, because
they know if he goes, all the other old men will follow, those who have
smothered their countries with one hand and robbed them blind with the
other. Mubarak is the Berlin Wall. "Down, down with Hosni Mubarak,"
resonates through the whole region.
In
Yemen, tens and thousands have demanded the ousting of Ali Abdullah Saleh who
has ruled them for 33 years. Algeria, Libya and Jordan have had their
protests. "I'm in Damascus, but my heart is in Cairo," a Syrian dissident
wrote to me.
My
Twitter feed explodes with messages of support and congratulations from
Saudis, Palestinians, Moroccans and Sudanese. The real Arab League; not
those men who have ruled and claimed to speak in our names and who now claim
to feel our pain but only because they know the rage that emerged in
Tunisia will soon be felt across the region.
Brave
little Tunisia, resuscitator of the Arab imagination. Tunisia, homeland of
the father of Arab revolution:
Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old who set himself on fire to protest at a
desperation at unemployment and repression that covers the region. He set on
fire the Arab world's body politic and snapped us all to attention. His
self-immolation set into motion Tunisian protests that in just 29 days
toppled
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year dictatorship. We watched,
we said wow and we thought: that's it? Ben Ali ran away that quickly? It's
that easy?
Ben Ali
called his armed forces for help 27 days into the popular uprising. It took
Mubarak just four days into Egypt's revolt to call the army. He had
unleashed the brutality of his security forces and their riot police, but
they couldn't stem the determination of the thousands who continued to
demand his ousting. He put Egypt under information lock-down by shutting
down the internet, Burmese-junta style, but still they came.
Ben
Ali's fall killed the fear in Egypt. So imagine what Mubarak's fall could do
to liberate the region. Too many have rushed in to explain the Arab world to
itself. "You like your strongman leader," we're told. "You're passive, and
apathetic."
But a
group of young online dissidents dissolved those myths. For at least five
years now, they've been nimbly moving from the "real" to the "virtual" world
where their blogs and Facebook updates and notes and, more recently, tweets
offered a self-expression that may have at times been narcissistic but for
many Arab youths signalled the triumph of "I". I count, they said again and
again.
Most of
the people in the Arab world are aged 25 or are younger. They have known no
other leaders than those dictators who grew older and richer as the young
saw their opportunities – political and economic – dwindle. The internet
didn't invent courage; activists in Egypt have exposed Mubarak's police
state of torture and jailings for years. And we've seen that even when the
dictator shuts the internet down protesters can still organise. Along with
making "I" count, social media allowed activists to connect with ordinary
people and form the kind of alliances that we're seeing on the streets of
Egypt where protesters come from every age and background. Youth kickstarted
the revolt, but they've been joined by old and young.
Call me
biased, but I know that each Arab watching the Egyptian protesters take on
Mubarak's regime does so with the hope that Egypt will mean something again.
Thirty years of Mubarak rule have shrivelled the country that once led the
Arab world. But those youthful protesters, leapfrogging our
dead-in-the-water opposition figures to confront the dictator, are
liberating all Egyptians from the burden of history. Or reclaiming the good
bits.
Think
back to Suez to appreciate the historic amnesia of a regime that cares only
for its survival. In cracking down on protesters, Mubarak immediately
inspired resistance reminiscent of the Arab collective response to the
tripartite aggression of the 1956 Suez crisis. Suez, this time, was
resisting the aggression of the dictator; not the former colonial powers but
this time Mubarak, the dictator, as occupier.
Meanwhile, the uprisings are curing the Arab world of an opiate, the
obsession with Israel. For years, successive Arab dictators have tried to
keep discontent at bay by distracting people with the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Israel's bombardment of Gaza in 2009 increased global sympathy for
Palestinians. Mubarak faced the issue of both guarding the border of Gaza,
helping Israel enforce its siege, and continuing to use the conflict as a
distraction. Enough with dictators hijacking sympathy for Palestinians and
enough with putting our lives on hold for that conflict.
Arabs
are watching as tens of thousands of Egyptians turn Tahrir Square into the
symbol of their revolt. Every revolution has its square and Tahrir
(liberation in Arabic) is earning its name. This is the square Egypt uses to
remember the ending of the monarchy in 1952, as well as of British
occupation.
The
group of young army officers who staged that coup in 1952 claimed it as a
revolution, heralding an era of rule by military men who turned Egypt into a
police state. Today, the army is out in Tahrir Square again, this time
facing down a mass of youthful protesters determined to pull of Egypt's
first real post-colonial revolution.