In the recent book The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East, Middle East analyst Marc Lynch credits “leaderless movements” of the Arab uprisings – fueled by news outlets and social media – for contributing to the ousting of dictators in the Arab world. Lynch argues that these leaderless movements prevented the manipulation of the uprisings and allowed for a “people’s revolution.”
However, recent trends in Egypt are demonstrating that leaderless movements can only go so far. Yes, the citizens of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya were able to organize under a common objective – the overthrow of their respective regimes – but it seems the residents of these countries cannot agree on what should follow.
Last week, in what was deemed a military coup by some, the Egyptian Supreme Court dissolved the parliament and granted the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) the right to draft the constitution. The court invalidated the parliamentary elections held to date, putting Egypt back at the forefront of the Arab uprisings and revealing sharp divisions between various factions within the country. While both former president Hosni Mubarak’s prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, and Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi claimed victory in last weekend’s presidential election runoff, Egyptian military leaders issued a decree on June 17 reducing the powers of the presidency and declaring that a constitution must be completed in three months.
Compounding the situation is Tuesday’s revelation that Mubarak is in a military hospital in critical condition. The specter of his death, amid renewed demonstrations in Tahrir Square, adds a troubling dimension to Egypt’s disarray. As Mubarak’s health deteriorates, the military leaders continue to consolidate their hold on power, demonstrating that Egypt’s military rule remains entrenched despite Mubarak’s ousting. Any unifying factor that drove the February 2011 revolution, including the patriotism of the early days of the uprising, has disappeared in the confusion and lack of direction that now permeates Egyptian politics. Both the leaderless movement that inspired many and the modern-day pharaoh who retained a strong grip over Egypt are on life support.
These events provide a cautionary tale for Syria, where the uprisings are increasingly violent. The Syrian revolutionaries rode the waves of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen only to experience the most violent repression from any Arab leader yet. The opposition has failed to coalesce, and even the idea of overthrowing the regime still frightens many, including the minority populations within the country and external actors who fear civil war or greater regional conflict. This has prevented the magnitude of protests seen in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad understood the lack of cohesiveness uniting their citizens, which is why both the Egyptian and Syrian governments pursued policies of divide and conquer. Leaderless movements undermined this tactic, because the regimes did not know who to target. But now, the people within these countries are divided again.
What can be done about the political vacuums these leaderless movements have created? While one could argue that the election results in Egypt and the prospects for a post-Assad Syria are not favorable to U.S. interests in the first place, the pursuit of human rights in these countries should not be undermined by this argument. In the summer of 2010, I was part of a group of Rice University students who traveled to Cairo, Egypt, through the Baker Institute for a public diplomacy dialogue with students from the American University in Cairo (AUC). I recently spoke to some of the Egyptian students we met two years ago.
“The fact that we don’t have a blatant leader makes it difficult for [Egyptians] to understand the complexity of a situation like ours, which makes it difficult to understand when is the right time to act,” said Dalia Abbas, a senior at AUC. She went on to say that potential leaders like Mohamed El Baradei could only act as “motionless watchdogs” over the Egyptian military, which is “slowly fermenting its power” over the country.
The future trajectory of Egypt now rests on the divisions between the three M’s: the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the masses. These rifts will be evident in the coming weeks and in the process of drafting the country’s constitution. While many Egyptians, including Abbas, pointed to Turkey as a potential model for democracy in Egypt, Egypt seems to be following a different path, now facing a “counterrevolution.”
Syrian opposition members should take note and begin to grapple with what the landscape of a post-Assad Syria would look like, if their revolution succeeds. The Syrian military is not as powerful and centralized as that of Egypt’s, but there is certainly a takeaway: an unclear path to stabilization and lack of defined leadership for a transition can have detrimental effects on any democratization efforts.
Instead of shaping their countries through individual desires, the citizens of Egypt and Syria should find ways to progress under common objectives. This involves answering the hardest questions about how to successfully transition first, by drafting constitutions and establishing transitional committees. To do this, the “leaderless movements” prompted by Twitter and Al Jazeera may not alone be enough.
Marc Sabbagh, a 2012 graduate of Rice University, is a Master of Arts candidate at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.