From Tunis To Tehran

It is now clear that a wave of democratization is sweeping across the Arab world. What began in Tunisia with the exile of dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has now spread to Arab and Muslim capitals from Cairo to Tehran. The world has not seen a democratic wave like this since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

Protests in Libya

Right now, it looks like Libyan dictator Mohammar Qaddafi, who has ruled his country with an iron fist, is about to be the next Arab despot to get thrown out. Michael Totten has an inside view into Qaddafi’s Libya, and it isn’t pretty. It’s telling that Qaddafi is playing the tyrant right to the inevitable bitter end: instead of leaving in exile, Qaddafi has ordered his forces to massacre civilians. With luck, that action will land Qaddafi a date with an angry mob and a lamppost rather than a comfortable villa in some tropical location.

That strategy isn’t exactly working for Qaddafi. His own diplomats are denouncing him, and two Libyan fighter pilots have defected to Malta rather than fire on protesters. Once the military begins defecting, it’s usually a sign that a regime is on the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, many on the right are worried about Islamist influences taking over the Egyptian revolution. And while the fears about the Muslim Brotherhood are usually overblown there is cause to be very cautious. As Foreign Affairs notes, the Muslim Brotherhood is not the monolithic organization it’s made out to be. But at the same time, there are undeniably Islamist elements in the Muslim Brotherhood, and they are organized.

The Absent President

But what continues to be troubling is the absence of American leadership in this delicate time. The Obama Administration’s mixed messages over Egypt’s revolution has discredited them in the eyes of many of the democratic reformers than we will need to win over. By failing to support the Egyptian protesters early on, the Obama Administration ceded valuable ground to the Islamists who were late to the revolution but are now positioned to seize the initiative.

For all the talk about Obama’s “smart diplomacy,” we haven’t seen much of either. Right now, the United States should be enforcing a “no-fly” zone over Libya—but so far, the Obama Administration has been as weak on Libya as they were on Egypt. Now is not the time for mealy-mouthed platitudes or half-measures. It used to be that the President of the United States would unapologetically stand on the side of pro-democracy movements. Now, our government keeps sending mixed messages.

Where Does This Wave Lead?

The Middle East stands at an inflection point. Arab and Muslim dictators are dropping like flies, and the idea that Hosni Mubarak and Mohammar Qaddafi could end up being overthrown within the space of a few weeks would have been unthinkable not all that long ago. But even though many have been waiting for this moment for years, it is fraught with danger. Right now, the popular movements that are sweeping across the region are leaning in the direction of democracy. But the longer the West delays, the more anti-democratic forces have the opportunity to seize the initiative.

Now is the time for the West, and especially the United States, to make its position clear. The only legitimate governments are those governments that respect the wishes of their people. Our position should be the same as the protesters currently risking their lives in Tehran: death to dictators.

After Egypt’s Revolution

This weekend, the government of Egypt began to collapse. After a week of unrest, last Friday saw the beginning of the end for the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Following in the footsteps of the revolution in Tunisia, the Egyptian people have risen up and kicked out their incompetent and autocratic leadership.

This may sound like a wonderful thing on the surface, but the trust is far more complicated. The likely winner of a free Egyptian election won’t be liberal democrats, but the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Barry Rubin looks at the likely outcomes of the Lotus Revolution and finds that the radicals have the upper edge. Remember, Egypt is the birthplace of radical Islam. Sayid Qutb, the man who inspired the modern Islamist ideology, was an Egyptian. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The number two man in al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was Egyptian, So too was Mohammad Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 attacks. Egypt has long been a hotbed of radicalism, and polling shows that many Egyptians are largely sympathetic to Islamist ideology.

Protesters in front of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum

What was even more distressing was the risk of Egypt falling into anarchy. Some of world’s greatest treasures are contained in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. The museum is next to the headquarters of Mubarak’s political party, the NDP. Already, two priceless Egyptian mummies were vandalized in the chaos. But the Egyptian people took the security of their ancient past into their own hands: a human chain of Cairenes protected the museum and arrested looters until the Army could arrive and secure the building. Many in Egypt have long learned that the only way to keep the peace has been to band together into neighborhood associations: the police would not or could protect protect them. Those ad hoc organizations have helped to save lives and keep order during the revolution.

Who Will FIll The Vacuum?

It appears clear that the Mubarak regime will not survive for very long. The Egyptian people have spoken, and if the Army continues to support the protests, Mubarak will have no choice to flee or die. But the question then becomes about how will fill the power vacuum?

Nobel laureate Mohammad El-Baradei appears the most likely front-runner. El-Baradei was the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and a well-known figure. He is also closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. If El-Baradei gains power, the Muslim Brotherhood gains power right with him. At worst, this would make Egypt like Gaza: a radicalized hotbed of Islamist that would pose a serious threat to the stability of the region, and could spark a war with Israel. At best, the Muslim Brotherhood has to compromise and support democratic reform. But given the attitudes of the Egyptian people, a secular government seems unlikely.

The big question is how the military will react. The military is the most widely respected institution in Egyptian society. If they throw in with the Islamists, then Egypt could look like another Gaza. But if the military decides to enforce democratic norms, Egypt could look much more like democratic Turkey. The Egyptian military, thankfully, tends to be less Islamist and more nationalist. A military government, strangely enough, could be more democratic than a populist government led by someone like El-Baradei.

Ultimately, the question is up in the air. There is even the possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood and the military will end up fighting for dominance, leading to civil war. This outcome seems unlikely know, but the idea that the Mubarak regime would suddenly collapse in a popular revolution didn’t seem very likely just a few weeks ago.

President Obama: Voting ‘Present’ Again

Here in America, this crisis has exposed just how weak American foreign policy has become under President Obama. The lack of a coordinated response from the Obama Administration was inexcusable. First we had Vice President Biden saying that Mubarak was not a dictator and should not step down—a statement that was both irresponsible and idiotic. For one, Mubarak most certainly is a dictator, if an American one. Second, it signaled to the Egyptian people that the American government was in bed with the regime they were dying to overturn. The damage that statement caused was severe, and may have ripple effects for years.

President Obama was hardly better. There was a time when American leaders were unabashedly and unapologetically in favor of democracy worldwide. While President Obama’s statements on Friday night gave lip service to universal human right, the US government has done little to show support for the people of Egypt. Already, there are comparisons between Obama’s handling of Egypt and Jimmy Carter’s handling of Iran in 1979. The feckless response to the Lotus Revolution demonstrates American weakness abroad at a crucial time in the Middle East. Democratic movements across the region know that America will do little to protect them: Islamist ideologues know that America will do little to stop them. It is a recipe for disaster.

The Future of the Middle East Is Being Written Now

The revolutionary fervor that began in Tunisia is beginning to spread: there have been protests in Jordan and Yemen as well. But these revolutionary movements aren’t all democratic: many are Islamist movements seeking to further isolate the region from Western democratic influence. What we are seeing could be a flowering of democracy or a regional descent into radicalism. And we are sitting on the sidelines.

American policy should be clear: we will not directly intervene in the region without being asked, but we are not neutral. We support democratic movements over Islamist ones, and we will no longer prop up convenient autocrats like Hosni Mubarak.

When Mubarak first came to power, supporting the Egyptian regime made sense: they were willing to support peace with Israel and prevent the outbreak of another regional war. But the dynamics of the region have changed: autocracy feeds Islamism.

Before this revolution, the only place where an Egyptian could speak against the regime was in the mosques. The Muslim Brotherhood was the only group that could stand against the Mubarak regime. If Egypt is to democratize, it must develop civil society where there has been virtually none. That will not happen within a few weeks, a few months, or even a few years. Democracy is a process, not an event, and it will take generations for a democratic culture to develop in Egypt.

That is why sitting back and doing nothing is not an option. If democracy is to flower, it has to be supported, both internally and externally. That means the United States must be willing to engage with Egyptian pro-democracy activists and work to support civil society across Egypt and the region. But if all we are going to do is sit around and wait to see how things shake out, we will miss opportunities to shape events in favor of democracy and human rights.

President Obama said all the right words on Friday, but the right words are not enough. If we want a free and peaceful Middle East we have to support those who will make the Middle East more free and more peaceful. That means becoming more, not less, involved in the region. We don’t have to be heavyhanded in our treatment of the region, but benign neglect will not help anyone.

Right now, Egypt is at a turning point. The future of the region is being written now, and if Egypt tilts towards democracy and pluralism, it could continue to spill over across the region. But if Egypt becomes another Islamist theocracy, the democratic dreams of people from Beirut to Tehran could be crushed. As a believer in liberal democracy, I would like to think that democracy will win out. But pragmatically, I know that democracy is a rarity in human history: the human condition is much more likely to be in bondage to autocrats or tyrants than consensual governments.

But ultimately, the fate of Egypt will be written by the Egyptian people themselves. And they have shown that they will not live with the autocratic regimes that were once common across the region. The rest of the world can either recognize the new reality of the Middle East or be steamrolled by it.

Christian Persecution Spreads In The Middle East

The Coptic Christian community has been a part of Egyptian life for nearly 2000 years. The Copts are direct descendants of the Ancient Egyptians, and the Coptic language is the closest linguistic descendant to the language of the Pharaohs. Christianity existed in Egypt before the Islamic faith was revealed to Mohammad.

The aftermath of the Alexandria church bombing

That is one of the reasons why the plight of Egypt’s Christian minority is so disturbing. On New Year’s Day, a Coptic church in the port city of Alexandria was bombed by Islamic terrorists with links to al-Qaeda, killing 21 people and wounding another 97. Repression of Egypt’s Coptic minority is becoming increasingly common, as Islamic radicalism spreads like a cancer through Egypt’s body politic. It is telling that the reaction to the bombing was not a condemnation of Islamic radicalism, but the typical accusations that “Zionists” and the Mossad were behind the blasts.

Not all Egyptians have fallen for the official line, and there have been widespread protests against the attacks, and calls for national unity between Egyptian Christians and Egypt’s Muslim majority. But at the same time, there have been attacks against Christian groups by Egyptian security forces, and the Mubarak government has been less than interested in stopping the attacks. So long as the terrorists aren’t going after the government itself, the Mubarak government will condemn terrorism on one hand, while fanning the flames of extremism with the other.

The Guardian explains some of the institutionalized prejudice felt by Egyptian Copts:

Some feel their very identity as Egyptians is being deliberately eroded by the state. Baghat expresses a victimisation that leaves Christians feeling “assaulted twice, once by their Muslim neighbours and then again when the powers-that-be side with the attackers”.

Peter Gobrayel, a worshipper at St Paul’s, said; “We are treated as second-class citizens in every way; the only interaction we have with the government leaves us feeling like failures, and of course that makes us feel like we don’t belong.

“I fought for Egypt in the 1967 and 1973 wars, and was a PoW in Israel; you could say that I’ve spent the whole of my life on the frontline for my country. Now, speaking honestly, when I see the nation burning I just want to add petrol. I am an Egyptian first and foremost, and yet my country seems to want to eradicate me.”

For Hossam Baghat, Copt-Muslim tensions will only be resolved when the government ends its security-driven response to sectarian violence and begins implementing the rule of law.

But the Mubarak regime has little interest in the rule of law. The Mubarak regime is playing a cynical game by using anti-Christian and anti-Semitic sentiment as a safety valve. Blaming religious minorities and Israel focuses popular anger away from the regime where the anger truly belongs. If people are rioting against the “Zionists,” they aren’t rioting against the Mubarak regime. Caught in the middle between autocratic regimes and Islamic zealots are people like Egypt’s Copts, increasingly endangered minorities trying to keep their faith alive.

But Egypt isn’t alone in this regard. In Iraq, an ancient Christian community is also under siege. Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled the country as Islamic extremism have made Christians a target. Nearly half of Iraq’s Christian population have fled the country.

From Egypt to Iraq, the Christian communities of the Middle East are dwindling due to violence and discrimination. The rise of radicalized Islam have pushed out minority communities, especially religious minorities. Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Morocco used to have vibrant Jewish communities during more tolerant times. But since cynical Arab leaders realized that exploiting anti-Semitism could keep them in power, those communities have been forced to flee to the West or Israel.

What is more disturbing is that this phenomena is spreading across the globe. After the attacks in Alexandria, Coptic Christians from Australiato Canada to Germany are fearing further attacks by Islamic terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. If the goal of terrorism is to sow fear, then these attacks are working.

As Mark Seddon writes in The Independent that we may be witnessing a new age of Christian persecution across the region. Indeed, all the evidence suggests that is exactly what is going on.

The West should not stand idly by while entire communities are uprooted and religious persecution spreads across the region and the world. The plight of Egypt’s Copts and Iraq’s Chaldean and Assyrian Christians are part of the larger struggle for the Middle East. One of the goals of groups like al-Qaeda is to push all but Salafist Muslims out of the Middle East. But their violence won’t stop there: their goals are worldwide, and they will attack anyone who stands in their way.

The West cannot make weak condemnations and then ignore the problems. The US gave over $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Egypt in 2010, mostly in the form of military aid. If the Mubarak regime will continue to sit idly by while Egypt’s Copts are slaughtered—or worse yet, be complicit in the persecution itself, the US need not support them with foreign aid. Further US aid should be tied to demonstrable changes in Egyptian policy and demonstrable steps in fighting terrorism rather than tacitly encouraging it.

We would like to think that persecution of Christians is a phenomenon of the past: but throughout the Middle East it is a sad reality. And unless both the West and the people of the Middle East stand together against this new wave of persecution, it will only continue until these ancient communities are destroyed. But unfortunately, small communities like Egypt’s Copts or Iraq’s Assyrian Christians are almost invisible to most in the West. That is why al-Qaeda and other Islamic radical feel free to attack them: they know that it won’t make as big a splash as attacks against Western interests. But if the West stands firm and works hand-in-hand with civil society groups in the Middle East to protect religious minorities, there is still a small chance these ancient communities can be saved.

This January 7th is the Coptic Christmas celebration, a celebration that this year is muted by fear and violence. But Christmas is a time of hope, and if the world is willing to stand united in opposition to terrorism, there may be hope to stop this wave of oppression before it wipes out the Christian communities of the Middle East.