Professor Henry Srebrnik

Professor Henry Srebrnik

Wednesday, August 07, 2019

Democracy is in Decline in the Middle East

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The past few years have not been conducive to political liberalization in the Middle East.

Political repression worsened in Egypt, where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the spring of 2018 was re-elected with 97 per cent of the vote after security forces arbitrarily detained potential challengers. 

In Saudi Arabia, after the government drew praise for easing its draconian ban on women driving, authorities arrested high-profile women’s rights activists and clamped down on even mild forms of dissent. 

Evidence also mounted that in late 2018 Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had personally ordered the assassination of self-exiled critic and columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

The murder put a spotlight on authoritarian regimes’ aggressive pursuit of prominent critics. Turkey itself, which sought to keep Khashoggi’s murder on the front pages, has by its own account captured 104 of its citizens from 21 countries over the last two years in a global crackdown on perceived enemies of the state.

In Syria, hundreds of thousands of civilians from certain ethnic and religious groups have been killed or displaced as world powers either fail to respond adequately or even facilitate the violence.

The ongoing four-year civil war in Yemen, seen mainly as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has killed thousands and left millions on the brink of starvation, with an estimated 50,000 people dying from war-related famine.

In Lebanon, parliamentary elections took place in 2018 for the first time since 2009, after repeated postponements of the balloting. But all is not well beneath the surface.

The Shia Hezbollah guerrilla movement exercises de facto control over the fractured country, to such an extent that it is impossible to differentiate between them and the Lebanese state.  

The movement itself retained its previous level of representation in parliament --13 out of 128 seats -- but the bloc of which it is a part won just over half of the seats in parliament.

It is now in the governing coalition and holds ministerial portfolios.

Aligned with and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah’s superior military strength when compared with the Lebanese Armed Forces, and its ability to go to war at a time of its own choosing, mean that the state and the group are in effect indistinguishable.

Hezbollah has around 25,000 full time fighters, along with 20-30,000 reservists. They possess some 150,000 rockets, thousands of anti-tank missiles as well as anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles.

Given this deteriorating situation in the region, it should therefore come as no surprise that a recent survey in the Arab world shows that more than half of its young adults – some 52 per cent -- are considering emigrating.

The Big BBC News Arabic Survey, a joint assessment by BBC News Arabic and Arab Barometer, a Princeton University-based non-partisan research network, was the largest in-depth survey ever carried out in the region. Over 25,000 people in 10 countries and the Palestinian Territories participated in interviews for the study between October 2018 and April 2019.

Economic factors were cited in the survey as the predominant reason for emigration. Conflict and instability have increased the rate of economic decline.

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