Repression sharpens hunger for change [- A lesson for the dictatorial regime in Phnom Penh]

February 18 2011
By Roula Khalaf
Financial Times

The day after Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was forced out, the joke in Cairo was that the long-time leader next door, the eccentric Muammer Gaddafi, had abolished Fridays.

Both Mr Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali were ousted on a Friday and, curiously, they were swept away after delivering exactly three speeches, the last one on the day before their fall.

Every new dawn, however, marks a threatening day for the Middle East’s remaining autocratic rulers

In Libya, activists had called for a Thursday protest on an emotionally charged day – the anniversary of the killing of demonstrators in a February 2006 protest against a Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed. But two days earlier, clashes between police and demonstrators erupted in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, and spread to nearby towns.

Colonel Gaddafi, in power since 1969 and with no desire to relinquish control, launched a brutal crackdown, leaving at least 24 people dead, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

No sooner had Egyptians celebrated their revolution than the protests in Yemen intensified, posing the most serious challenge to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule; Algerians too were encouraged to step up demonstrations against the regime of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

In Iran, the opposition Green movement, whose revolt in 2009 had been the envy of Arab populations from Cairo to Riyadh, was suddenly reinvigorated, sending massed crowds on to the street on Monday to remind the Islamic regime of their existence.

It was in the small Gulf state of Bahrain, however, where the Shia majority ruled by a Sunni minority regime had been agitating long before Tunisia’s revolt erupted, that the new-found confidence of the Arab public appeared to erupt most powerfully this week.

Shia protesters took over the Pearl roundabout in the capital, Manama, to create their own mini Tahrir Square, the centre of Egypt’s revolt, in what Bahrain’s ruling Sunni al-Khalifa family might have seen as a challenge to its rule’s existence. Security forces attacked sleeping activists and fired on protesters, further enraging the Shia community.

Sadly, the Middle East’s autocratic rulers are still deaf to the message of Tunisia and Egypt, incapable of understanding that their survival depends not on the use of force but on swift political progress that gives the disgruntled public a share of power.

In the changing Middle East, Bahrain’s al-Khalifas cannot continue to rule through denial, ignoring that Shia grievances are the product of real discrimination. Col Gaddafi too cannot govern Libya under the pretence that it is a “people’s Jamahiriya”.

True, every country has its circumstances, and the outcome of popular protests is not guaranteed. As Peter Ackerman, founder of the US-based International Centre for Nonviolent Conflict, says, there is no formula for success but there are “better ways of doing things”. Some of the key elements are the unity of the protest movement and its non-violent nature, its planning, and the ability to shift the loyalty of the regime’s pillars.

In the case of Libya, a vast country with a dispersed population of 6m and where Col Gaddafi has kept people quiescent by bribing tribal leaders and playing them off against each other, it is not clear that disparate groups can produce a sustainable movement. Libya’s leader, flush with oil revenues, already offered this week to double salaries, according to news reports.

The biggest challenge of Bahraini demonstrators, meanwhile, is the sectarian divide. Shia protesters face a Sunni minority regime that can count on the loyalty of its constituency and, most importantly, on security forces deliberately built up to exclude Shia.

In Iran as well, the crackdown is led not by the traditional army, which is the least loyal to the Islamic republic, but by the Basij militia and the riot police of the Revolutionary Guard.

Putting down protests by force might buy time but does not secure long-term protection. The more repressively governments in the Middle East behave, the more radicalised is the opposition they face. By Friday in Bahrain, as families were burying their dead, earlier calls for constitutional reform had given way to the clamour for regime change.