Fouad Ajami: Demise of the Dictators
[Ajami, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the author of, among other books, The Dream Palace of the Arabs.]
Historians of revolutions are never sure as to when these great upheavals in human affairs begin. But the historians will not puzzle long over the Arab Revolution of 2011. They will know, with precision, when and where the political tsunami that shook the entrenched tyrannies first erupted. A young Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, in the hardscrabble provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire after his cart was confiscated and a headstrong policewoman slapped him across the face in broad daylight. The Arab dictators had taken their people out of politics, they had erected and fortified a large Arab prison, reduced men and women to mere spectators of their own destiny, and the simple man in that forlorn Tunisian town called his fellow Arabs back into the political world.
From one end of the Arab world to the other, all the more so in the tyrannies ruled by strongmen and despots (Libya, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, and Tunisia), the Arab world was teeming with Mohamed Bouazizis. Little less than a month later, the order of the despots was twisting in the wind. Bouazizi did not live long enough to savor the revolution of dignity that his deed gave birth to. We don’t know if he took notice of the tyrannical ruler of his homeland coming to his bedside in a false attempt at humility and concern. What we have is the image, a heavily bandaged man and a tacky visitor with jet-black hair, a feature of all the aged Arab rulers—virility and timeless youth are essential to the cult of power in these places. Bids, we are told, were to come from rich Arab lands, the oil states, to purchase Bouazizi’s cart. There were revolutionaries in the streets, and there were vicarious participants in this upheaval....
Why have the Arabs not raged before as they do now—why has there not been this avalanche of anger that we have witnessed in Tunisia and in Egypt? Why did the Arabs not rage last year, or the year before that, or in the last decades? An answer, one that makes the blood go cold, is Hama.
In retrospect, the Arab road to perdition—to this large prison that the crowds have set out to dismantle—must have begun in that Syrian city in 1982. A conservative place in the central Syrian plains rose in rebellion against the military regime of Hafez Assad. It was a sectarian revolt, a fortress of Sunni Islam at odds with Assad’s Alawite regime. The battle that broke out in February of that year was less a standoff between a government and its rivals than a merciless war between combatants fighting to the death. Much of the inner city was demolished, and perhaps 20,000 people perished in that cruel fight. The ruler was unapologetic; he may have bragged about the death toll. He had broken the old culture of his country and the primacy of its cities.
Hama became a code word for the terror that awaited those who dared challenge the men in power. It sent forth a message in Syria, and to other Arab lands, that the tumultuous ways of street politics and demonstrations and intermittent military seizures of power had drawn to a close. Assad would die in his bed nearly two decades later, bequeathing power to his son. Tyranny and state terror had yielded huge dynastic dividends....
Read entire article at Newsweek
Historians of revolutions are never sure as to when these great upheavals in human affairs begin. But the historians will not puzzle long over the Arab Revolution of 2011. They will know, with precision, when and where the political tsunami that shook the entrenched tyrannies first erupted. A young Tunisian vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, in the hardscrabble provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire after his cart was confiscated and a headstrong policewoman slapped him across the face in broad daylight. The Arab dictators had taken their people out of politics, they had erected and fortified a large Arab prison, reduced men and women to mere spectators of their own destiny, and the simple man in that forlorn Tunisian town called his fellow Arabs back into the political world.
From one end of the Arab world to the other, all the more so in the tyrannies ruled by strongmen and despots (Libya, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, and Tunisia), the Arab world was teeming with Mohamed Bouazizis. Little less than a month later, the order of the despots was twisting in the wind. Bouazizi did not live long enough to savor the revolution of dignity that his deed gave birth to. We don’t know if he took notice of the tyrannical ruler of his homeland coming to his bedside in a false attempt at humility and concern. What we have is the image, a heavily bandaged man and a tacky visitor with jet-black hair, a feature of all the aged Arab rulers—virility and timeless youth are essential to the cult of power in these places. Bids, we are told, were to come from rich Arab lands, the oil states, to purchase Bouazizi’s cart. There were revolutionaries in the streets, and there were vicarious participants in this upheaval....
Why have the Arabs not raged before as they do now—why has there not been this avalanche of anger that we have witnessed in Tunisia and in Egypt? Why did the Arabs not rage last year, or the year before that, or in the last decades? An answer, one that makes the blood go cold, is Hama.
In retrospect, the Arab road to perdition—to this large prison that the crowds have set out to dismantle—must have begun in that Syrian city in 1982. A conservative place in the central Syrian plains rose in rebellion against the military regime of Hafez Assad. It was a sectarian revolt, a fortress of Sunni Islam at odds with Assad’s Alawite regime. The battle that broke out in February of that year was less a standoff between a government and its rivals than a merciless war between combatants fighting to the death. Much of the inner city was demolished, and perhaps 20,000 people perished in that cruel fight. The ruler was unapologetic; he may have bragged about the death toll. He had broken the old culture of his country and the primacy of its cities.
Hama became a code word for the terror that awaited those who dared challenge the men in power. It sent forth a message in Syria, and to other Arab lands, that the tumultuous ways of street politics and demonstrations and intermittent military seizures of power had drawn to a close. Assad would die in his bed nearly two decades later, bequeathing power to his son. Tyranny and state terror had yielded huge dynastic dividends....