Spring risings 18 months later
On 4 June 2009, President Obama delivered a speech to the Muslim world at the University of Cairo. It was to have lasting consequences.
He’d been in the White House less than five months. Then aged 47, Obama had spent seven years in the Illinois state senate and four years in the US senate in Washington. His interest in the Islamic world reflected the fact his Kenyan birth father Barack Obama had been born a Muslim. His Indonesian stepfather was also one. Obama spent four years in Indonesia as a boy.
Charismatic, idealistic and the first African-American to be elected US president, Obama ran on the slogan “Yes We can”. He was tall, slim and athletic. But at the heart of his appeal was a longstanding opposition to the US government’s decision to invade and occupy Iraq. With the US economy falling into depression following the start of the great financial crisis, Obama beat his Republican opponent John McCain with 53 per cent of the popular vote in November’s presidential poll.
In office, Obama attempted to reach out to the Arab world by granting his first interview to an Arab satellite TV network Al Arabiya. On 19 March, Obama released a New Year’s video message to the people and government of Iran. In April, Obama delivered a speech in Ankara,
But the climax came in Cairo.
“We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world – tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate,” Obama said. “So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.”
Obama dwelt on his Muslim heritage, reiterated the plan for US troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities, called for Israel to end the construction of settlements in the West Bank and repeated the overture to the people of Iran.
Obama’s Cairo speech in June primed the Arab Spring explosion….
What was to prove to be explosive in less than 18 months came later in the speech. It’s worth quoting at length.
“America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election,” he said. “But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.”
In the audience at Cairo University that day were members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood. Their response was cool. But Obama’s words reverberated among the educated and young. Some were to become Arab Spring rebels.
It’s impossible to read the passage about political rights without concluding that not only did Obama without qualification back political freedom and the rule of law for the people of the Middle East. He was also prepared to support those struggling to secure it.
A message had also been delivered to Middle East rulers, particularly to US allies in the region. Obama was putting principle above real politick. But what did that mean in practice?
The answer came in Tunisia. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, an army officer who had replaced Habib Bourguiba in a bloodless palace coup in 1987, was re-elected for the fifth time as head of state that autumn with an implausible 80 per cent of the vote. Tunisia was then being hammered by the global economic downturn. Ben Ali, 74 in September 2010, was in fact reviled as dictatorial, out of touch and incompetent.
The spark for revolution was lit on the morning of 17 December 2010. A street vendor named Tariq al-Bouaziz doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire in a street in Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia in protest at mistreatment by the police. His last words are reported to have been: “How do you expect me to make a living?”
Al-Bouazizi died of his burns on 4 January 2011 and thousands joined his funeral procession. Protests in Sidi Bouzid spread across Tunisia. Ben Ali declared a state of emergency, dissolved the government on 14 January 2011, and promised new legislative elections within six months. But it was too late. The army and prominent figures in the regime had lost confidence. At 4pm that day, Ben Ali announced his resignation and left with his family to spend the rest of his life in Jeddah.
The Tunisian revolution was televised and electrified the Middle East. By the end of January, there had been demonstrations demanding political change in Algeria, Oman, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and signs of more to come.
Obama backed calls for Egypt’s President Mubarak to go…
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, was at the eye of the storm. On 25 January, protests began in Cairo and around Egypt calling for the resignation of 82-year-old President Mubarak, who had been in power for almost 30 years. On 1 February, he announced he would not seek re-election later in the year.
Obama proved himself true to his words in Cairo and intervened publicly.
“An orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now,” he said in a statement later that day. On 11 February, then Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak had resigned and that power would be turned over to the Egyptian military.
Later that day, Obama welcomed Mubarak’s departure with emotional language that compared the organisers of the Egyptian protests to Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
“There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place” he said. “This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.”
This was the high point of the Arab Spring uprisings. And its principal agitator was the former community organiser from Chicago Barack Obama.
Obama’s voice of freedom was silenced in mid-March…..
But his enthusiasm for radical change in the Arab world was to last little more than one more month. On 14 February, demonstrations started in Manama, capital of Bahrain. The government tried to disperse them. Protesters blocked roads and overwhelmed the Bahrain police.
On Friday 18 February, Obama called Bahrain’s King Hamad to condemn violence on the island but affirmed Bahrain’s stability depended on respect for the rights of its people. It was to be the last time Obama publicly pressed for the demands for the Arab Spring to be met.
On 14 March, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreed to deploy Peninsula Shield Force troops to Bahrain. Saudi Arabian forces crossed the Bahrain Causeway that evening. The following day, King Hamad declared a three-month state of emergency.
For the first time since the start of the Arab Spring, the US’ public response was led not by Obama but by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. She demanded on 16 March that Bahrain show restraint with demonstrators and keep hospitals open. The US would continue to call for restraint and dialogue in Bahrain, but a turning point had been reached. Obama’s call for Middle East freedom first voiced almost two years earlier was silenced. Conventional US government policy priorities based on national self-interest were quietly restored.
Rebellions continued across the Middle East and were supported by Obama in Libya and Syria. But the unqualified enthusiasm for democracy he expressed in June 2009 was gone. From March 2011, US policy changed to promoting selective regime change, but only where that aligned with American strategic goals.
It was the moment the original Arab Spring movement of the people of the region died.
No individual can be said to have caused or ended the Arab Spring of 2011. It was the work of many hands and the result of many years festering resentment in more than two dozen countries.
But no individual did more to inspire it and cheer it on once it began than Barack Obama. And, for that reason, no one bears greater responsibility for its ultimate failure than America’s 44th president.