A Siege of Salt and Sand

Since Tunisia overthrew the rule of President Ben Ali during the Arab Spring, they have been faced with a multitude of new problems. Mostly, these can be attributed to the rapidly changing and erratic climate. Rising diseases which leaves its victims scarred for life which comes because of the changing climate. The farmers have been struggling to irrigate their crops properly with the advancing sand from the Sahara overwhelming homes, villages, and the traditional sources of water. In addition to that, the rising sea levels has raised the salinity of the coasts, which were traditionally rich in agriculture. The presence of salt makes agriculture impossible and once the sea reaches it, it is ruined.  This has forced people to abandon their living traditions built on centuries of consistency. The Tunisian government has taken steps to help these people move forward in the immediate sense, while also looking for long term solutions to this problem.

This changes pace from the ideas we have had in class so far. Rather than looking at regime changes or the history of the region, A Siege of Salt and Sand addressed the immediate attention that needs to be placed on the affect climate change has on us.

The Dangers of Rentierism

While renting has brought tremendous amounts of wealth into the pockets of Middle Eastern and North African countries, it poses significant threats towards equality and democracy becoming a norm in the region. The relationship between rents and the lack of democracies is obviously not just down to the oil itself. Something that comes from the ground cannot be at fault for suppressing human rights. However, it is the astronomical quantity of money which brings corruption and nondemocratic practices that can, and should take the blame. Money helps prevent democracy, and can be a powerful engine to prevent change in countries.

When the money collected from natural resources goes straight into the hands of those in power, they have no true incentive to pass it onto their people. The lack of accountability of elected or traditional leaders gives the populace no reason to expect anything from them. If money circulated not just back to the pockets of the citizens, but at least to something which would have visible benefits, political efficacy might increase. However, since that is not the case, the state has no need for the taxes of its citizens due to the rent profits, creating a near meaningless relationship between the two besides the necessity for labor. Rather than developing and nurturing a positive and symbiotic exchange, rentier states and their leaders have only sought to line their pockets more, and by doing so, preserving their own power. While the size of the rents is not by any means insignificant to how countries proceed with regards to democracy, the influx of money into the political system is the main reason behind the absence of democracy.

The power behind oil money is not restricted to the Middle East and North Africa, which shows that it not simply just the scale of the rents. Rather, it is the money which are synonymous with those rents combined with the opaqueness of MENA governments which has stifled progress. The money keeps change at bay, stunting the ability of the people to get involved, since there is no benefit to them trying. The cyclical nature of maintaining power by spending the oil money from the rents to do so without nearly any of it going back to help the people. The low tax rates combined with a general low interest in involving the people results in the same leaders staying in charge without any popular oversight, which is part and parcel to a democracy.

Rather than reinforcing the idea of a resource curse, what needs to be examined is the structure of the government within the resource rich states. Resources cannot be immediately seen as a threat, but rather as a positive force for the improvement of a state’s population. The tremendous amounts of wealth hydrocarbons have can turn a countries’ fortunes around. Public education, infrastructure, and economic advancement all become more possible with the influx of money, but it lies on the government to ensure that happens.

Western Democratization in the Middle East

When Lisa Anderson examined the key issues with Western interpretations of democracy in the Middle East, it stemmed from a fundamentally flawed definition of what democracy should be. From misunderstanding Islam, the cultures, and the people, political scientists made grave mistakes in attempting to identify the root problems of why Western democracy would not begin in the Middle East. While outsider powers were looking in trying to mold a group of newly formed states into their perfect democracies, the states themselves had established forms of government which were not eager to reform to Western standards.

Western democracies failed to understand that even they lack some sort of universal similarity. The perfect democracy that political scientists discussed did not exist, so immediately the attempts to turn Middle Eastern countries into a Western democracy were bound to fail. When US Secretary of State Colin Powell believed the United States, “could fundamentally reshape the Middle East in a powerful, positive way,” it demonstrates the attitude which Western powers had when they approached the Middle East. The seeming pessimism about any regime in the Middle East and how it automatically seems to be categorized as an authoritarian and oppressive leads political scientists down a road which leads nowhere towards answers, but rather towards self-praising essays about how great Western democracy is. This is where the discipline of area studies becomes necessary to understanding the region fully.

Rather than just examining the structures of the government and how that regime stays in power, political scientists need to understand what the people and culture of regions are like to truly understand what keeps a regime intact. For example, the presence of the Muslim religion in the Middle East is more complex than any political scientist understood. Rather than being directly opposed to democracy, it is just as conducive to a liberal democracy as any other monotheistic religion. Often, discussions of possible democracies in the Middle East were immediately dismissed because of the shallow understanding of Islam.

In our course, we can avoid these simple mistakes by immersing ourselves in the culture of the Middle East and trying to understand the lives of both the leaders at the top of the regime, as well as the people that they are ruling. In addition, we must remove the inner biases of democracy and examine what the effects of imperialism were on the region. Strong leaders often thrive in situations where strong leaders traditionally rule. This does not just apply in the Middle East; Mayor Richard J. Daley in Chicago was a tremendously powerful and authoritative figure. However, many of the recently immigrated residents in Chicago found nothing strange about this because they were previously living in states that had the same personalities in charge.

Following the Arab Spring uprisings, Anderson’s criticism of political scientists and their view of Middle Eastern democracy seems to ring true. While clearly not all the revolts resulted in the instituting of democracy, some have had success and that is not due to them following the traditional western path. While parts of her essay certainly did not predict what would happen, she was ahead of the curve.