The perfect storm is coming, are you ready?

The East African (Monday 14th Feb 2011)

A seismic shift is underway in the Middle East that started in Tunisia, then Egypt and has then spread like a “contagion,” as Syrian President Basher el Assad is reported to have described it with trepidation. Across the region, spontaneous uprisings seemingly led by the youth have blown the lid off the previously most tightly sealed political cauldrons on the planet. Some of the most resilient, accomplished and wealthiest autocracies in the world are having the political and social equivalent of a massive seizure. It will rock the world. A similar, albeit far more orchestrated tsunami hit Africa in the early 1990s.

Within a year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, African countries found themselves under huge Western pressure to implement liberal democracy. The effects of this bout of liberalisation, that continue to reverberate to this day and followed the World Bank-led economic liberalisation of the mid-1980s onwards – turned us inside out. Some African countries melted down immediately into prolonged periods of civil strife. A key actor of that tumultuous era, Charles Taylor the former Liberian dictator, is currently about to see his case at the International Criminal Court concluded. In other states, predatory elites weathered the storm and managed to reinvent themselves.

It would be naïve to imagine that what’s happening up North won’t reach us in powerful and as yet not really describable or predictable ways, but that it will reach us and change us profoundly, we can confidently predict. The Middle East is home to the West’s most important friends in the entire so-called Third World — suppliers of that commodity indispensable to the development model adopted by much of the globe — oil. Emerging information, partly from WikiLeaks, about the true nature of these relationships is adding fuel to the revolutionary fire. What Israel means will be transformed by the current developments as well. The ingredients for the current storm are shared by many countries — authoritarian regimes perceived to serve primarily the interests of venal elites and foreigners; an unemployed youth bulge (especially informed and educated unemployed and underemployed youth); and in addition to that a global environment where the truth matters and the lies of states are exposed for what they are quickly and clearly.

The creation of powerful, globalised and highly networked non-state actors has made a difference too — affecting the environment in which politics happens, sometimes leading to interesting contradictions. Al Jazeera, for example, has been at the forefront of reporting this revolution and is based in the absolute monarchy of Qatar. Social media as tools for the transmission of information have played a critical role too but only in speeding up processes and narratives that were already underway. Unemployment, high food and fuel prices, stark inequalities (even in an environment of rapid economic growth) and conspicuous consumption among tiny self-appointed elites that act with sneering impunity are powerful drivers as well. In addition to this, social media has also changed what youth means; Obama started the trend – once you are socially networked, you are radicalised by implication, for you are in a sphere that is unmoderated, unmitigated and like the universe itself, constantly growing, challenging, questioning, revealing, exposing. In all the countries currently experiencing a revolutionary moment, corruption has been key to the disaffection finding such currency with the populations of the Arab world. Recently, it was raised by 36 tribal elders representing 40 per cent of the population in Jordan with regard to the antics of the affable King Abdullah, his family and entourage. I read a hopeful pro-regime opinion in a local paper recently asserting that what’s happening in North Africa couldn’t possibly happen in Kenya, essentially because “tribalism shall save us.” The argument was that our fragmentation along ethnic lines is so profound that it is impossible to organise anything resembling a spontaneous reform process that is actually “national” – of, by and for the people.

This reveals the very kind of thinking that has leaders in the Arab world foxed and their allies all over sweating light crude. The old model is that revolts are “organised.” So to deal with them, you seek out the organisers, harass, intimidate, injure and even kill them to “decapitate” the problem and at the very least cow supporters into paralytic fear. The problem with this problem is that it isn’t “organised” in the old sense of the word. A critical mass of issues created the perfect storm. What’s happening and going to happen in North Africa and the Middle East is on a scale only comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in its potential, currently unpredictable effects on us right here and across sub-Saharan Africa. We have a total of 18 elections due in the coming year. One can but welcome democratic freedom, no matter how expressed, to North Africa and Middle East as tired regimes face populations who sense they have run out of ideas and have smelt blood in the water. As Marx said, “Revolution comes like a thief in the night.” The unexpectedness, speed and scale of what is happening has left analysts stunned. Its blowback on us will be similarly unpredictable, but a blowback there shall be!

 John Githongo is CEO of the Inuka Kenya Trust