What’s happening in the Arab World?
By Aladdin Elaasar
Some say it is the second Arab Revolt in modern history. Arabs revolted against the yoke of the Ottoman Empire encouraged by British. Lawrence of Arabia led the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula during the WWI and became a legend. But what do Arabs want now? Arabs are revolting against their oligarchs, autocrats, dictators from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean.
Arabs have been living under dictatorial police states in either a republican system that was set up by a young military officer who came to power by a coup, or an absolute monarchy that’s out of touch. The late president Bin Ali of Tunisia ruled that country for about a quarter of a century. Late president Mubarak came to power by accident after Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Sadat also came by accident when Nasser died suddenly by a heart attack in 1970. Nasser came to power after he staged a coup that toppled King Farouk of Egypt in 1952 ending Egypt’s Golden Age of liberalism and establishing a totalitarian regime second only to Stalin’s. Colonel Ali Abdallah Saleh of Yemen came to power also by a coup about 34 years ago. Colonel Gaddafi of Libya also came to power by a coup 42 years ago. The Assad Baathist regime in Syria has been in power since the early seventies. Saddam Hussein also came by a coup. General Al-Bashier in Sudan also staged another coup.
Arabs are complaining about the huge corruption and grave human rights abuses that they are witnessing in their countries where a small elite monopolizes power and the economy. Absolute monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan are no better.
These demonstrations are leaderless. They are neither political nor religious, and are mainly led by a young generation that’s educated, mainly jobless, unmarried and feels hopeless under these regimes.
Arabs are angry about the endemic corruption in their countries even in rich oil countries in the Gulf. They feel that their leaders - mostly in their late seventies and eighties- should have retired long time ago. Large Arab masses are barely surviving while hearing about the lavish life styles of their rulers.
The International Labor Office (ILO) annual World Employment Report 2004-2005 found out that, the number of unemployed people in Egypt climbed to new heights in 2005. Young people aged 15 to 24 comprise almost half of the Egypt‘s unemployed and are more than three times as likely as adults to be out of work. The ILO called this figure troublesome.
The Middle East and North Africa, MENA stands out as the region with the highest rate of unemployment in the world. With an unemployment rate of 23.2 %, the Middle East is ahead of sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region in the world, which has the second highest rate of unemployment, 19.7 %. The Arab League Economic Unity Council estimates unemployment in the Middle East (members of the Arab League only) at 20 percent. The number of unemployed people in MENA is particularly puzzling because the oil producing countries employ 7-8 million expatriate workers transmitting perhaps as much as $22 billion a year back to their home countries.
The employment to population ratio is a measure of the percentage of working-age population who are employed. Although MENA has registered a notable increase in this measurement, it has remained the lowest in the world, with 45.4 in 1993, and increasing only slightly to 46.4 a decade later. The latter figure contrasts with a ratio of 62.5 worldwide and a ratio of 57.0 in densely populated South Asia. The little increase in MENA reflects changes in women‘s employment. The ratio for women, which increased from 20.4 in 1993 to 23.5 in 2003, indicates fewer social and cultural restrictions on women‘s employment, although the ratio of 23.5 remains the lowest in the world. The figure for males, by contrast, has remained relatively constant (69.6 in 1993 and 68.6 in 2003).
MENA is the only region where productivity has not moved in tandem with GDP. The explanation for this unusual pattern is that the GDP growth was fueled primarily by the increases in oil revenues accompanied, according to the ILO report, by stagnant productivity. It is a perfect example, the ILO says, of why in the long term, ―decent employment creation and productivity growth have to go hand in hand with GDP growth. Only then will economic growth lead to poverty reduction. The report does make a distinction in the level of productivity between oil- and non-oil producing countries.
The most significant feature is the structure of the population. MENA is characterized by its growing young population, with 37 percent below the age of 15 years in 2000, and 58 percent below the age of 25 years. The working-age population is increasing by three percent a year. The biggest challenge facing policy-makers in the region is the high rate of youth unemployment, estimated at 25.6 percent in 2003, which is the highest in the world.
The unemployment rate of the MENA region has been hovering around the 23 per cent mark for the last decade. According to the ILO report this steady rate of unemployment reflects an average of 500,000 of additional unemployed per year. The increase in employment is not enough to absorb all those who enter the labor market annually.
In May 2005, Taleb Rifai, regional director of ILO, asserted that the high rate of unemployment in the Arab world, which at one estimate reached 20 percent, will ultimately result in a state of underemployment, as most people will be forced to take up jobs for low compensation packages that do not suit their qualifications, and will further result in increased poverty.
Former Egyptian Minister Gowaili, and secretary-general of the Arab League Economic Unity Council, referred to an unemployment rate of 20 percent in the Arab countries. According to Gowaili, this percentage is translated into 22 million unemployed, of whom 60 percent are youth. This figure, he added, is likely to increase by three percent annually. He attributes the main cause of unemployment to the failure in most Arab countries to link educational orientation to the labor market requirements.
It would be necessary to shift workers from a low productive employment, and from what the director-general of ILO called the urban alleyways of many cities in the region, into a more knowledge-based production of high value-added commodities. The shift to a more knowledge-based employment is also dictated by the limited prospects of increasing the scope of agriculture in most Arab countries. The Economic Unity Council of the Arab League points out that the Arab countries occupy 10 percent of the world territory, five percent of the world population, but only 0.5 percent of its water resources.
In fact, the Arab countries already import food commodities worth $15 billion, and rising. To reach a higher level of knowledge base, the Arab countries in the region would need to invest more in Research and Development (R&D). The Economic Unity Council of the Arab League estimates that the Arab countries spent 0.24 percent of their GNP on R&D. Figures available elsewhere for individual countries show the big gap between the highest rated country in the world, Norway, with 1.6 percent of GNP in R&D, and Egypt, among the lowest, with 0.2 percent of GNP spent on R&D. In between are Israel with 0.9 percent; Qatar, 0.7 percent; and Jordan and Tunisia, 0.3 percent.
The Arab countries in MENA would also need to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). These countries remain the least attractive to FDI, acquiring only between one to three percent of total FDI, because of inhospitable environment for foreign-dominated businesses, various restrictions on foreign exchange, inefficient labor market, and absence of an adequate commercial code, corruption, oppression, bribes, and stifling bureaucracy.
Moreover, there is a psychological mindset in Arab countries that equates globalization with imperialism: Instead of seeking to bring its benefits to their countries, many Arab governments treat it with suspicion and mistrust. Hence, the contrast has emerged whereby in 2005, China attracted $62 billion in FDI, against $6 billion in Arab countries.
The Angry Young Arab Generation
With a persistently high level of unemployment, many educated young Arabs are seeking opportunities outside their countries. In doing so, they seek to escape the obligation to accept jobs outside their specialization, inadequate scientific and technological infrastructure, low income opportunities for the highly skilled and political instability or political oppression in the native countries; and they seek to gain opportunities for entrepreneurship with minimal bureaucratic constraints.
Among the lower skilled, migrations may be tied to the serious phenomena of human trafficking and grave physical risks. It is common nowadays to read about boats loaded with illegal workers sinking on the way from North Africa to southern Europe. Moreover, as a result of a high rate of unemployment, ―different forms of passive and active violence are on the upswing reducing the spaces for dialogue, conflict resolution and consensus building, warns the report.
In the words of ILO Director General Juan Somavia, ―the world is facing a global jobs crisis of mammoth proportions, and a deficit in decent work that isn‘t going to go away by itself.‖ Clearly, the statement is particularly pertinent to the situation in MENA, and especially to the Arab countries in that region.
Unemployment is a grave source of hopelessness that drives people to extremes. This was clearly demonstrated in the twentieth century in the rise of Nazism and Fascism. Unemployment has the great potential of being a source of political instability and even violence, and it is to no one‘s advantage to treat this economic dislocation with equanimity. Klaus Schwab, the president of the World Economic Forum, warned that unemployment in the Middle East is a time bomb that would require the creation of 100 million new jobs in the next 10 years to defuse it.
Give Freedom, or Give me Death
Why, do Arabs have so little freedom? What has led Arab democratic institutions to become stripped of their original purpose to uphold freedom? Some analysts seek answers in the fraught and ambiguous relationship between East and West, portrayed as a stark split. The first pole is usually associated with ―despotism‖ as a supposedly inherent characteristic of the East‖ and Eastern‖ civilization, while the second is linked to freedom, purportedly a fundamental quality of Western‖ civilization.
Some have claimed that Arabs and Muslims are not capable of being democratic, for the very reason of being Arab or Muslims. However, a recent research effort, the World Values Survey (WVS), has exposed the falseness of these claims by demonstrating that there is a rational and understandable thirst among Arabs to be rid of despots and to enjoy democratic governance. Among the nine regions surveyed by the WVS, which included the advanced Western countries, Arab countries topped the list of those agreeing that ―democracy is better that any other form of governance‖ according to the UN‘s Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) in 2003.
―Since when have you compelled people to enslavement, when their mothers birthed them free?‖ Caliph Omar bin al-Khattab said more than fourteen centuries ago. But it seems that his saying has been long forgotten by both the oppressive regimes throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Political rights, of Arabs and Muslims, the realization of justice and equality, the assurance of public freedoms, the right of the nation to appoint and dismiss rulers, and guarantees of all public and private rights for non-Muslims and Muslims alike do not exist to a great extent in some Arab and Muslim countries. Political forces, in power and in opposition, have selectively appropriated Islam to support and perpetuate their oppressive rule, the UN‘s Arab Human Development Report stated.
―The rulers of the Middle East are not democratic politicians with finely tuned senses of what their publics want. They are dictators. After all, if Mubarak were so close to his people, why would he need to arrest, torture and murder hundreds to stay in power? These men fear a public that they barely know. In the Middle East, the democrats are the first to seek refuge in fantasy, denial and delusion. America‘s allies in the Middle East are autocratic, corrupt and heavy-handed… The monarchs and dictators are quick to remind us always that for all their faults, they are better than the alternative, said Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria.
―They [terrorist acts] are a response to living under wretched, repressive regimes with few economic opportunities and no political voice. And they blame America for supporting these regimes. The reasons were the same; people disliked the regimes that ruled them and they saw America as the benefactor of those regimes. Perhaps the Middle East will move on a similar path; violence, religious extremism and terrorism will be drained out of the political culture and, instead, its people can join the rest of the world in worrying about the threat from McDonald‘s and Baywatch. Zakaria said.
Aladdin Elaasar has been a frequent commentator on the Middle East on American and international TV and Radio networks such as CNN, ABC, NBC, NPR, MSNBC, FOX NEWS, BBC radio and TV, and others. The Author had predicted the downfall of the Mubarak regime and exposed the corruption of that regime. Elaasar taught Mid-Eastern studies at Senator Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, the Defense Language Institute, and The Monterey Institute for International studies. His columns cover international relations, current events, and Arab/American issues. He was cited in Guardian, New York Times, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, Sunday Times, Paris Match, La Stampa, and the international press. He is the author of The Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain Future of Egypt in the Obama Age.
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