The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
I spoke last night to Sabrina about the Arab Spring. Of Berber descent, she grew up in Algeria in Batna, a relentlessly ugly city of endless cheap apartment blocks in the heart of the Aurès mountains, south of Constantine. Batna was constructed by the French in 1844 as a military camp in order to protect the roads running into the Sahara. Military officers from Batna controlled the army and by extension state power after independence; Batna’s residents were consequently targeted by the FIS for particular cruelty. Of Sabrina’s childhood classmates, she is the only survivor. All of the others were executed in FIS massacres, their throats slit. Her father was a military officer (he died some years ago in exile in Paris), and her family fled to France not to profit from its economy, but to save themselves from slaughter.
And what did she expect of the Arab spring, I asked her?
Il sera le même, she said. Mais pire. It will be the same. But worse.
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Sep '10
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
The Arab Spring is a fiction primarily constructed by journalist. Most realists suspected the various optimistic descriptions and expected nothing of a positive nature. I primarily read mostly financial reporting and find it difficult to obtain accurate factual information. If it is that difficult to find factual information in a segment of journalism that is dealing primarily with recorded data I believe it is realistic to conclude journalism dealing with political/social matters is little more than fiction.
Oct '10
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
There never was any sort of Arab Spring. It's been an Islamist Spring from the outset with enough democratic flavoring to give the gullible press the story they wanted to tell rather than the story that was factual.
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
I second and third Liberal Jim and Publius. Liberals (that includes the press) see what they want to believe. Conservatives believe what they see.
May '10
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
Fouad A, on the new podcast, seems to be a bit more optimistic, but I lean toward Sabrina's outlook. This is a part of the world with ZERO history of rational government. The Islamist leaders want Islamist states. Whether they create them quickly or slowly they will all end in the same place: Sharia law. My heart hurts, as I have visited a few of these places.
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
I'll just point out that very few of us have seen any of this, and that the overwhelming tendency I've noticed is that people predict that things will conform to their personal experience. So pro-AKP Turks think Tunisia will look like Turkey under the AKP, Algerians think Tunisia will look like Algeria in the Black Decade, and Americans tend to think it will look like something they've experienced--for good or ill. My best guess is that the next 20 years in Tunisia will look more like the last 20 years than anything else, and that this goes for every country in the region.
Aug '11
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
Like most people, I hope for the best and think we should prepare for the worst. The problem is that even the best we can hope for is becoming increasingly grim; and we cannot figure out any way of preparing for the nightmarish worst except to quite literary fortifying ourselves against it. This is no time to cut back on our military capability, is it?
Incidentally, it is possible to get a free and democratic political system in nations which have no history of human rights or democracy -- think Taiwan and Korea. It seems to take a great deal of time and patience, however. And in the case of Taiwan and Korea it took the either direct or indirect military presence of the United States.
Dec '10
Re: The Arab Spring Versus the Bitterness of Experience
Claire, I think the truth of the incredible brutality that is so much a part of the islamic world must be revealed. Your simple personal method for doing this is the most effective. Like with holocaust survivors, let those who have suffered tell their stories. We will realize what the truth is and what we need to do about it. Thanks for this short but important piece.