A woman casts a ballot in southern Kyrgyzstan. Credit: Nicolas Tanner / Associated Press

After leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” For post-election Kyrgyzstan in 2011, the question is much the same for the Central Asian state: Can Kyrgyzstan keep it?

On October 30, 2011, the people of Kyrgyzstan voted in the first lasting, non-interim presidential election since the bloody overthrow of former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s repressive autocratic regime in April 2010, and the “June Events” that followed.[i] The elections mark a decisive step in the transition from the post-conflict-installed provisional government to a legitimately-elected democratic system.

Almazabek Atambayev, a wealthy businessman and former Prime Minister, was elected the next president of Kyrgyzstan, garnering 63% of the popular vote.[ii] However, these results have not come without contestation. This was the fourth election since Kyrgyzstan became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, and it comes at a time of great uncertainty for the Central Asian state. Though many had high hopes for this election, the tendentious and environmentally deterministic reading of recent Central Asian history suggests otherwise, depicting “ ‘an environment conducive to tyranny and megalomania’[iii] with the concomitant implication that representative democracy and civil society are beyond the reach of such peoples, due to the basic disadvantages of their local geography.”[iv] In a country long marked by authoritarian rule, Kyrgyzstan has continually challenged modern trends about democratization in former Soviet states.[v]

During the two decades of Kyrgyz statehood, elections have been purely formal exercises designed to cloak the ruling elite with a veil of legitimacy. “Ethnic violence in the south left a legacy of division and mistrust and raised some difficult questions about governance, national identity and future stability.”[vi] However, according to Ulukbek Chinaliev, the Kyrgyz ambassador to Russia, “The aim is to maintain the unity of our country, to prevent a split – neither for territorial reasons, nor for any regional interests.”[vii] Bakiyev, along with his predecessor, Askar Akayev, relinquished power only after being deposed by throngs of angry citizens.[viii] Since then, the interim presidency of Roza Otunbayeva has made great strides, most notably for diluting presidential powers and arranging the first Parliamentary Republic in Central Asia.[ix] However, there are no guarantees that Atambayev will not revert to the same corrupt policies that preceded the interim president.[x] Moreover, the potential for protests (at best) and violent reprisals (at worst) by the minority Uzbek population is still an ongoing concern, since neither of the two main southern candidates have accepted the election results and their supporters have already amassed in protest.

The presidential election started with more than 80 candidates, and was reduced to 16 by election day; only three of these were seen as viable candidates for victory: a northerner and two southerners.  Election specialists projected that Atambayev would garner 60% of the popular vote. In Kyrgyzstan, however, it was widely speculated that none of the top three contenders would gain the necessary 51% majority to win the election in one fell swoop.[xi]

Campaign poster for Tashiyev’s ultranationalist Ata-Jurt party. Credit: Reuters

Atambayev, the northern candidate who maintained front runner status during the entirety of the election, ran under a welfare platform, promising to raise meager state salaries and pensions, and restore economic stability.  For the Kyrgyz people, however, the chief concern with Atambayev’s candidacy had been his northern elitism and Russian proclivity – an ongoing point of contention for southern nationalists and minority Uzbeks, especially in a country with an antagonistic north-south divide. Since being elected, his first orders of business are to restore and nourish existing ties with Russia (where nearly 500,000 Kyrgyz migrant workers reside), transform the Manas Transit Center from a U.S. military air base to a civilian center, extend the citizen wing of the Interior Ministry, develop a structure to fight governmental corruption, and form a new parliamentary coalition in accordance with the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan.[xii]

The remaining two primary candidates – Ex-Emergency Services Minister Kamchibek Tashiyev, and former parliament speaker Adakhan Madumarov – are both extreme nationalist southern politicians.

Madumarov, leader of Butun Kyrgyzstan party, has close ties to the ousted Bakiyev regime. It’s only fitting that he ran under a platform of legality and constitutional reform designed to bolster parliamentary and presidential power. This stance, along with his public comments, mirrored former authoritarian leaders: At one point, in a nationally televised presidential debate, he mentioned the need to “cut off the tongues and legs” of journalists smearing his reputation. Yet, despite his autocratic public persona, support for Madumarov remained strong, especially after pledging to students at the Kyrgyz Agrarian Institute that, “I will never steal from the government’s coffers and I will never appoint someone to high office just because we come from the same region, they are my brother, or because they paid me money.”[xiii] The question is, will he relent and accept the votes of his countrymen?

Tashiyev, a former boxer, is well known for his ultra-nationalism and public antagonism, which often culminated in physical assaults on fellow party members who disagreed with his policy proposals. “Tashiyev’s nationalist Ata-Zhurt party stunned observers last year by easily winning the largest share of votes in parliamentary elections. That resounding success came on the back of soaring nationalist sentiments that prevailed in the wake of interethnic clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in the south.”[xiv] Subsequently, Tashiev’s public warnings that an unfavorable result – that is, him losing the election – would end in demonstrations exacerbated fears that the election would reignite Kyrgyz-Uzbek ethnic tensions and the regional divide, especially since protests generally constitute angry mobs taking to the streets. According to Central Asian specialist Joshua Foust, “While many businesses have been restored, with a Kyrgyz face, the whole region is in a depression: incomes are down, many businesses are facing mounting debts, and the divisions between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz communities seems to be growing by the day. It is difficult to see a future for Osh that doesn’t end in disaster.”[xv] Though it’s still early, Foust may have hit the nail on the head, as the days following the election have resulted in southern protests emphasizing election violations and demanding a re-vote.

While independent election analysts and the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission (CEC) expected election violations to be minimal, a number of NGOs in Jalal-Abad and Osh Oblasts (there are 7 oblasts, or states, in Kyrgyzstan) are alleging corruption. Most problems were technical errors, though, and were quickly resolved. The CEC received 97 complaints and appeals, 65 of which were related to absence of voters on the voting list.[xvi]  More seriously, only two days before the election, the control check of the voter list of Kyrgyzstan revealed 2,606 cases of citizen duplication, discovered in over 80 precincts. However, prior to election day, notifications were made to precinct election commissions about duplications, who were to remove them and “destroy extra ballots making a special act to prove the procedure.”[xvii] Additionally, though CEC reports stated that 3.034 million Kyrgyz citizens were registered to vote,[xviii] reports indicated only 1,412,628 voters (46.58%) actually took part in the election.[xix] Naturally, this fans the protests, since previous elections’ voter turnout ranged from 60-70%. Yet, while there is still potential for violence, thus far, the protests have been fairly tame, boasting only small crowds of nonviolent demonstrators.

Kyrgyz presidential candidate Kamchybek Tashiyev. Credit: Radio Free Europe

Independent election monitors have reaffirmed that the election was free and fair, complimenting the polling stations for having proper equipment, including fax machines and ballot boxes. According to Sergey Lebedev, Chairman of the CIS Election Observation Mission, “All candidates were provided equal opportunities for campaigning. Of course, a candidate from the government had more opportunities to appear on national television channels due to his official duties. The same things happen in the Western countries, in the U.S. This happened here as well, but we cannot say rights of other candidates were derogated. They had the opportunity to post their promo materials on TV, billboards.”[xx] In a press conference on October 31^st, Nobuhiko Suto, representative of the parliamentary delegation of Japan monitoring the presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan, said, “We have not seen serious violations that could impact the voting results in Kyrgyzstan.”[xxi]  During a meeting with acting Kyrgyz Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov, Japanese Parliamentarians reaffirmed that, “The elections in Kyrgyzstan were … transparent and open.”[xxii] Russian CEC member, Elena Dubrovina, praised the elections, saying, “All polling stations opened in time on the day of vote. I saw a high voter turnout…Visiting the polling stations we saw such shortcomings as failure of citizens to find their names in the voter list, though they received invitations, and (the) premises for voting were small… Most claims were about the voter list. The process was transparent, open and accurate on the whole.”[xxiii] In addition, during a meeting with Miroslav Jenca, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative, and Head of the Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia, interim President Roza Otunbaeva said, “I am proud of my people, who made assessment of the past events with their choice. This voting showed that the people consolidated for further development.”[xxiv]

The European inter-governmental organizations, though impressed with the outcome, are still erring on the side of caution. “Despite flaws with the voters lists and tabulation processes, we are cautiously optimistic about the future of democracy in Kyrgyzstan. Significant work is still needed at all levels for this country to live up to its commitments to hold democratic elections,” said Walburga Habsburg Douglas, Special Coordinator with the short-term Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s observer mission. According to Inese Vaidere, the Head of the European Parliament delegation, “We believe that this election is crucial for the future of the country and its further co-operation with the European Union. Overall, our delegation positively assessed the voting procedures on election day but we would like to underline the necessity to improve the voter registration system to further increase public confidence in the electoral system.”[xxv]

Of course, not everyone shares these positive sentiments. Tashiyev has publicly announced that he does not recognize the results. Rather than holding transparent elections, he believes that Kyrgyzstan has reverted to its old habits. “People were deprived of the right to vote, freedom of expression, freedom of choice. There were not dozens, but thousands of violations: voter busing, ballot stuffing, pressure,” he said.[xxvi] While this number is grossly overinflated, in the days following the preliminary results, between 200 and 300 Tashiyev supporters have organized in Osh Oblast, stating that the electoral system technology worked only in favour of one candidate and included the abuse of administrative resources. Protestors in Jalal-Abad submitted a petition to the local governor, which included a demand to publicly announce the elections as illegitimate, and a pledge to hold repeated elections.[xxvii]

Map of Kyrgyzstan. Credit: Lonely Planet

Though less incendiary, in an attempt to discredit international election monitors Madumarov has accused the OSCE of generating lies, particularly after recognizing the past elections of Akaev and Bakiev – both authoritarian despots who were recognized by developed western governments and international election observers – as legitimate. Habsburg Douglas has dismissed such claims, as nation-wide monitoring took place, with observers scrupulously recording all violations. “The reports were produced. I cannot but believe my observers. They reported both positive and negative moments,” she said.[xxviii] In Osh, his supporters have blocked roads. In Kyzyl-Kiya, around 100 protestors from Butun Kyrgyzstan amassed to protest that their names not being on the voter lists, but dispersed after having talks with the local mayor.[xxix] However, while Madumarov publicly announced that he did not recognize the election results, when asked about organization of rallies, he said, “I support resolution of any issue in a civilized manner.”[xxx] Though miniscule, this is a positive step towards utilizing the system rather than undermining it.

Overall, these protests are largely unfounded, since neither Madumarov or Tashiyev managed to individually acquire even 15% of the overall vote.[xxxi] Furthermore, post-electoral protests in Kyrgyzstan are as much a cultural practice – by which the Kyrgyz people are simply unable to accept the results – as they are legitimate grievances grounded in sound fact. According to ex-State Secretary Ishenbai Abdurazakov, “Unfortunately, we have a tradition that many candidates during presidential or parliamentary elections cannot recognize the results. Naturally, candidates themselves and their supporters protest and say the elections were unfair.” Accordingly, candidates make grand promises and when defeated, they revert to other methods, in order to be heard. He goes on, “There is nothing terrible in local protests. It is necessary to let them blow off steam in accordance with the law and accepted norms. If they raise broad masses of the population, this would be harmful for our society and our traditions. I think we can understand the defeated, but one should be able to accept defeat.”[xxxii] As of right now, Atambaev has already extended the olive branch to both Madumarov and Tashiyev, publicly offering them the chance to join his new government.[xxxiii]

On the whole, it appears as though this election, though not without minor shortcomings, has gone off without a hitch, as protests have been nominal and inter-ethnic reprisals virtually nonexistent. Yet, while the absence of violent protest is a progressive sign that the Kyrgyz people are willing to work with the system, rather than overthrowing it, Kyrgyzstan is still recovering from the shock of the April revolution, the “June Events,” and of course, years of trading one authoritarian for another. The real test lies ahead. The lack of violence is a good start, but it’s no secret that from top to bottom, Kyrgyzstan has a history of corruption, nepotism and ethnic division, ranging from law enforcement to the NGO sector. Moreover, since declaring independence in 1991, the Kyrgyz have continually relied on larger powers (be it the Russians or the Americans), and have never been fully equipped to stand on their own feet.

In short, though the past 20 years may provide a dismal outlook for the Central Asia state, there appears to be a genuine desire among the general populace – many of whom have grown cynical of the political and social upheaval – to repair the ethnically-charged wounds of the past two years, implement more democratically inclusive development initiatives, and end the violence and corruption that have become the rule, rather than the exception. Fortunately, Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary democracy, albeit fragile, is buttressed by its new constitution, drastically reducing the chances of a return to authoritarian rule.

A successful and uncorrupted presidency could craft a unified sense of national identity, quell governmental distrust and move forward toward a more pluralist and secure society. President-elect Atambayeva seemed optimistic at prospects for the future of Kyrgyzstan, saying, “People are tired of protests; they do not want any more blood. We’ve already had enough revolution. It’s time to work.” Whether or not Atambayev’s new government can institute a strong rule of law, nationally and ethnically inclusive policies and improved economic stability remains to be seen. It’s safe to say that the coming years will determine whether this election marked a milestone in Kyrgyz history – ushering in a new era of civil society – or simply another failed attempt at democratization.

*The Toronto Review of International Affairs grants anonymity to contributing correspondents whose professional obligations preclude independent publishing. This correspondent is an international development worker currently living in Kyrgyzstan.

Provided.

As Shashi Tharoor strides into San Gimignano, an Italian restaurant nestled in the Raj-era grandeur of New Delhi’s Imperial Hotel, he politely makes a brief detour to another table. There, checking his BlackBerry, is the chief minister of India’s troubled Jammu and Kashmir state, and he is soon joined by Rahul Gandhi – scion of India’s most prominent political dynasty and heir apparent to the ruling National Congress party.

The restaurant’s waiters snap cellphone pictures, but my lunch guest simply shakes hands and apprises them of political gossip from his own state of Kerala. Mr. Tharoor, an inveterate charmer used to both diplomatic and political parties, moves effortlessly in such circles. He has become one of India’s most prominent politicians since abandoning a decades-long career at the United Nations, leaving only after a narrow loss to Ban Ki-moon in a bid to become Secretary General in 2006.

“It’s a job that I had spent an entire career preparing for,” he says, listing off the various positions he held – from heading peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia to being a senior adviser to Kofi Annan, the man he hoped to precede. “It’s not a job application where you pick the best resume. It’s much more about political calculations of governments and I fully respect the process. It worked out the way it did, and I’ve moved on.”

It is the only time in a lengthy conversation about terrorism, international politics, Indian democracy and China’s authoritarianism that he becomes a bit terse, dropping his fluid, graceful manner for a response that – though still frank and honest – seems rehearsed. I don’t blame him. It clearly still stings and being asked about it, again, 5 years on, can’t help. We move on.

Our lunch takes place in early May, while I’m in India on assignment for The Globe and Mail. It’s dusty outside, and Mr. Tharoor, the author of 12 books (most of them non-fiction), notes that it is too hot for soup. He has the pizza funghi and a vegetarian ceasar salad, which he will return because of its sheer size. I opt for an appetizer of grilled vegeteables, olives and cheese, with an eggplant parmesan, prompting him to ask me if I’m Veg. I am not. The conversation moves on almost immediately to Osama bin Laden’s assassination by a United States covert operation in neighbouring Pakistan, which that day was dominating the headlines of India’s vibrant newspapers. (One particularly irreverent headline read, “OBAMA BINS LADEN.”)

In Pakistan-loathing India, the general reaction is, “We told you so.” And though Mr. Tharoor is pleased that Pakistan’s duplicity has once again been revealed for all to see, he is worried bin Laden’s death will allow countries to abandon Afghanistan faster than they were already planning, and for the umpteenth time to boot. He was right: France was already using the news as a pretext to exit, practically before we had put down our forks; since, the United States has said it will begin drawing down troops there, and so has Canada.

“The whole logic of the American intervention was supposed to have been to ensure that Afghanistan didn’t again become the kind of country which could produce or harbour a future Osama bin Laden,” he says. “America, in a sense, would be in danger of forgetting what happened when it withdrew from Afghanistan after the Soviet collapse. Because into the resulting vacuum came the Taliban regime that harboured bin Laden and which led to 9/11. You withdraw again, and the same pattern could repeat.”

Mr. Tharoor, who started his UN career on the staff of the high commissioner for refugees, is intimately familiar with these patterns of underdevelopment, poverty and strife. Since leaving the U.N., where he obviously studied those issues globally, he has had to reacquaint himself with them in his own country (even as he uses our lunch to reacquaint himself with pizza, which he learned to love back in New York). His most recent book – The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone – is about the changing nature of India’s exuberant democracy, the political extremities of which can veer into the truly frightening; examples abound, from Hindu fascists burning Muslims in the streets to the cartoonish thugs associated with Mumbai’s Shiv Sena, a party that has opposed Valentine’s Day and is generally considered to have ties to organized crime in Bombay. Compared to more oppressive political environments in the region, such as in China, India’s politics looks chaotic, factional and in some cases closely and dangerously linked to race, religion or the Hindu caste system.

“In India, we have largely, wisely, decided that no kind of political opinion should be infamous, which is by no means an uncontested argument. There were many who argued, after the bitter partition that accompanied our independence, that any party espousing the views of a particular religion or religious community should be banned, for example. but the government decided not to do that, they didn’t want to delegitimize any sort of opinion and drive it under ground. So the Muslim League – which fought for Pakistan, the party of Jinnah – continues in India, and is a coalition ally of the Congress Party in Kerala,” he says. “We have a Sikh party ruling in Punjab. We have other parties that claim to represent specific belief systems and tendencies – caste and so on.  So the overt bigotry expressed by a party like the Shiv Sena, or the MNS which is an offshoot of the Shiv Sena, is nonetheless tolerated in the hope that the voting public will see how bad they are and reject them at the polls, rather than banning them and driving their opinions to other extremer forms of expression… The mere existence of these parties … is more a testament to the breadth of India’s democracy and the permissability of diverse opinion, than it is a reflect of anything wrong… The hope is that identity politics are sort of an infantile stage of politics that is necessary in a democracy finding its feet but that will eventually be outgrown.”

India’s flourishing democracy, with an increasingly empowered media and institutions trying to slough off endemic corruption, have not always been kind to Mr. Tharoor: His party forced him to resign as junior foreign minister after allegations of irregularities in a city’s bid for a Twenty20 cricket team. Mr. Tharoor, a flamboyant personality who has more than one million followers on Twitter, denied that he did anything wrong at the time, that he was only trying to help Kochi (which is in Kerala) get a team, and he remains the Congress party’s star candidate in the state of Kerala. He later got into more trouble after he Tweeted that he was going to travel “cattle class” on India’s trains in solidarity with the country’s “holy cows.” In India, these types of shenanigans shouldn’t merit much ink in the national dailies – given the surplus of actual corruption, like the $40-billion telecommunications scandal engulfing Delhi (the reason I was there) – but Mr. Tharoor’s life, and that of his family, is still regularly dissected in fine detail. Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of J&K that Mr. Tharoor greeted at the other table, would later have his own divorce examined in the broadsheets.

All this considered, it is intriguing to hear Mr. Tharoor weigh India’s technicolour democracy against China’s comparatively grim, development-first, democracy-be-damned agenda. He points out that China has cut the number of people living under the poverty line dramatically in the past 30 years, albeit under a stifling political climate, while India’s own figure remains mired around 260 million people – citizens who can vote, perhaps, but may not be able to eat. Both countries stand as beacons to developing country peers, but it’s vividly apparent that China’s domestic stability and global economic clout have made it shine a bit brighter. China’s thirst for resources in Africa and elsewhere have also put the country on an obvious diplomatic offensive, one that can be launched far more securely and confidently from Beijing than from New Delhi.

“Everyone can admire the results of the Chinese, but I don’t know that too many countries in the world who look up to the way in which they’ve accomplished them. I feel that we have been a good deal less efficient than China – we’ve come up with much less in terms of dramatic transformations, but we have brought our people along with us with every change that has happened and voters have decided each time on the policies and the people who will execute those policies,” he says. “We still have a long way to go before we can claim to have accomplished what China’s accomplished, but having said that I think that most people have a sense of what kind of system they’d rather live under and what kind of system they aspire to. Many countries are happy to trade with China, learn from China, buy from China, invest in China and so on, who don’t necessarily think that the Chinese system works as a system. Certainly, in my dealings with African countries, I’ve often found that african leaders, who are very often in awe of china, but never really wanted to replicate china at home. whereas when they looked at India, they saw a country that in many ways was familar to them, that seemed to have the same sorts of problems, divisions, challenges as they were suffering in africa, but seem to have overcome many of them – or at least have done a far better job of overcoming them than african countries may have thought possible.”

Indeed, but people power and democratic change in India are capricious things. At the moment, they are not exactly favouring Mr. Tharoor’s ruling party. There has been a huge government bribery scandal bubbling over in the telecommunications sector, and a cabinet minister and his adviser are already in jail. More are likely to follow, and all this came shortly after a bungling of the Commonwealth Games – a bungling which came replete with yet another scandal, where games contracts were awarded to friendly firms. But the reaction to these scandals has been remarkable: Street protests, Facebook groups, politicians being sent to jail, talk of independent anti-corruption commissioners. As we speak Anna Hazare, an anti-corruption campaigner, is gaining fame. After I leave India, Mr. Hazare becomes a Gandhi-like figure among the throngs at his Delhi protests. Mr. Tharoor thinks this shows the resilience of Indian democracy, rather than its underbelly.

“There is a sense of a miasma of corruption,” he says. “But at the bottom, it’s a country engaged in a great adventure – of pulling literally a quarter of a billion people out of poverty and misery into decent lives, and bringing all of us into the twenty first century on a platform in which India can really make a difference around the world.”

CAIRO—Mark and Mohammed. Two young men from the same corner of this city, who took to Tahrir Square during the January 26^th Revolution and continue to live the events of its volatile aftermath.

One is a Coptic Christian university student, while the other a Muslim newlywed. Both live minutes away in Cairo’s bustling Heliopolis district, but Mark and Mohammed’s paths never intersected until after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Yet the future path of Egypt – and the youthful demographic these two archetypes symbolize – is vividly represented by the trail Mark and Mohammed have walked since January.

While the youth sparked the revolution, and were the most integral demographic that carried it forward, their role is gradually fading. Tracking both Mark’s and Mohammed’s perspectives, beginning in January through the second week of September, vividly reveals the growing level of despair that stems from the re-disenfranchisement suffered by Egypt’s youth.

“I am not an activist,” were the precise words uttered by both Mark and Mohammed*, who reflected on their political involvement before and during the revolution. Neither was necessarily politically fluent, and their mutual disenchantment with and fear of the Mubarak regime had depoliticized them. “I just wanted to make good marks, and get a good job after university,” Mark said. “Politics would complicate things.”

Mohammed, a moderately devout Muslim Egyptian, echoed the same sentiments. “My family is most important to me, and my decision to participate in the rallies in Tahrir was to give my wife, family, and [future] children a better life than I had.” He pointed to an intersection near the Great Mosque Abbas, where he prays every Friday, and said: “One victory is that Mubarak’s policemen are no longer there, heckling people as they walk by.”

I first encountered Mark and Mohammed on the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page in January.  I was in Washington, DC, working alongside largely Egyptian American activists to promote consciousness and action through the Free Egypt Now initiative. Our interactions through the social networking site evolved into email exchange, Skype and telephone calls, and, ultimately, meeting in person.

During the embryonic stages of the Revolution, both Mark and Mohamed’s words were fueled by optimism, and driven by hope. Their tenor reached a climactic pitch on February 12, 2011, when Mubarak formally capitulated to the wishes of the new revolutionaries. I opened my email inbox to find a short note from Mark: “Good news from Tahrir, our dreams have come true.” From Mohammed: A concise “mission accomplished.”

Tomorrow would never be the same in Egypt, it seemed that jubilant night, and the futures of both Mark and Mohammed seemed far more promising.  But did they, really?

“I was one of the men that stood outside of the mosques on Friday, while they [Muslims] prayed,” Mark told me, referring to his time spent protecting the pious from Mubarak’s thugs. But now the  possibilities that Egyptians of all faiths, perspectives and stripes had imagined after the dictator stepped down was crumbling.  Mark’s tone had spiraled, his confidence for a secular, integrated and democratic Egypt torpedoed by the rising Salafist presence in his neighborhood, and his deep rooted mistrust for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

Mohammed’s world, and words, had also changed.  His wife was now pregnant, and his face reflected a growing, weary concern where once there was vibrancy.  “I fear tomorrow may be worse than yesterday,” he wrote by email, referencing how military tribunals and disorder on the ground now rule the day in Egypt.  He was short on work, but long on responsibilities that included providing for a wife and child.  His email closed with a message asking, “Can you help me immigrate to the U.S.?”

Mohammed’s query was particularly alarming because of the fervent love for Egypt that he displayed during our seven-month friendship.  He had seemed to give up, his hopeful banner of patriotism replaced with an unquestionable flag of surrender.

Mark’s perspective devolved as well.  While his words were once colored by optimism for an integrated and inclusive Egypt, his recent forecast focused on the rise of fundamentalism, the vulnerability of the Coptic community amid the tumult, and his inability to land an adequate job.

Mark and Mohamed are just two of the 8-million narratives in the streets of Cairo.  Where hope once swept through the streets of working class enclaves such as Heliopolis and Shubra, the very communities where the revolution was born, the familiar dusk of despair is settling back in.

More than 12,000 nameless Egyptians – many of them near Mark and Mohammed’s age – were imprisoned without due process, and tried by military tribunals.  The country’s new Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and the emergent reactionary and fundamentalist movements, have stunted the lifeline of the revolution, which poured into Tahrir and Egypt’s streets.

In short, the youthful, secular, populist and tolerant movement, spearheaded by the nation’s milieu of Marks and Mohammeds, has been stripped by reactionary and opportunistic elements.  If the youth whose imagination and efforts converted revolution into reality cannot be part of Egypt’s future, then what will a new Egypt look like?

A good guess is to look before January 26 – before I encountered Mark and Mohammed – for the images and voices, injustices and autocracy, which promise to revisit Egypt if the youth are continually marginalized from the movement they birthed.

*Mark and Mohammed are not the real names of these individuals, who were granted anonymity by the author to ensure their protection in Cairo. 

ACCRA, GHANA—On August 17, 2010, Franklin Otoo walked into the prestigious Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra to have a routine operation that was meant to repair a small hole in his heart.

During his surgery, though, a chaotic scramble left the grown man without oxygen for a whole 15 minutes, an agonizingly long period that was enough for him to sustain severe  brain damage. Nobody in the team of six doctors incubated him. Nobody attempted to administer CPR.

Ghana, of course, boasts one of the best health care systems in all of Africa. The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, which has links to Toronto’s famed Sick Kids hospital through the latter’s global child health program, is considered the best hospital in Accra and one of the best hospitals in Ghana. How could a team of its best heart surgeons make such a grave error? And why weren’t they reprimanded, or even questioned about their mistake? Otoos’ story is troubling for the country’s health sector, and tragically raises questions about authority and transparency in West African hospitals (and in the boardrooms of the aid agencies, donors and international partners associated with them).

Simply put, the Otoo family believe doctors get away with too much in Ghana, that they are put on a pedestal and never challenged. They wanted to tell us their story to warn other Ghanaians and to demand accountability in their hospitals.

Otoo’s father, John Kweku Otoo, remembers his son as calm, thoughtful and loved by everyone. He was fondly referred to as “Tolo,” an endearing nickname, by friends and neighbours. He was the second born of five children and Agnes’ and John’s only son. He was a successful poultry farmer and owned a farm with over 500 chickens in his coastal hometown of Takoradi.

Otoo was diagnosed with his heart condition when he was five. But it never seemed to bother him until his adult years when he started feeling tired and out of breath. When his symptoms worsened Otoo’s family took him to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra and booked him an appointment on August 20th for surgery. Since Korle Bu is one of the most reputable hospitals in Ghana, the Otoos were not worried.

Accra's Oxford Street.

Suddenly, on the morning of August 17^th, three days before his scheduled surgery, Otoo received a call from doctors telling him to come in to the hospital for a routine appointment. When he arrived, he was whisked off into surgery, unprepared, at noon that same day.

His family was as equally caught off-guard. Agnes rushed to the hospital in order to greet him when he woke up.

She waited until 6 p.m. Nobody came to talk to her or tell her how her son was doing. “It took four days until one of the doctors partially told me what went on,” she says. Doctors explained there had been problems during Otto’s procedure but that he would be fine. But Otoo wouldn’t wake up.

When Otoo’s middle sister Evelyn arrived a few days later, she tracked down one of the surgeons, Dr. Entsua Mensah, and pressed him to inform her about her brother’s condition. “[The surgery] took three hours because of ‘unseen complications.’ It was supposed to take one hour and they ran out of oxygen for 15 minutes. His body lay there for 15 minutes without oxygen,” she recalls.

His heart was fine, but half his brain was dead. He couldn’t speak or open his eyes. He couldn’t raise his hands. He had to be fed through a tube. He never moved again, until he died. “When I saw my son I wept,” John says.

To make matters worse, the family believed Otoo wasn’t being cared for properly post-surgery. “The doctors and nurses neglected him and didn’t dress his wounds and bathe him,” says Agnes.

Korle Bu personnel recommended they hire a private nurse to take care of him since their own staff was understaffed and overstretched. Vera, Otoo’s youngest sister, a nurse working away in Ghana’s Eastern Region, took over her brother’s care until he passed away. We attempted to reach representatives from the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital Cardiothoratic Centre several times, but were not successful. When we spoke to Dr. Lawrence Siriboe, the head surgeon involved in the case, he refused to comment.

When Otoo finally died, his family was quickly asked to cover nearly $1,000 (Canadian) in medical costs, since heart surgery is not covered under Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (although they were only charged for the surgery and not any aftercare). They also had to cover the costs of keeping Otoo’s body in the hospital morgue, transporting him to the funeral home and obviously unexpected funeral arrangements.

The hospital did not offer the Otoos any form of compensation, nor did the doctors take any responsibility for what happened, even though the death appeared to be a result of the doctors’ mistakes. Many people since have suggested the Otoos sue the hospital, and its doctors, on the grounds of medical malpractice and negligence. However, the family has decided against legal action, saying they don’t believe it would change anything.

“It’s not going to bring him back,” says Evelyn. “And why fight with the government?” The family clearly has little faith in Ghana’s legal system and assumes prominent public figures, such as doctors, would always have preferential outcomes in court. She regrets not recording her conversations with the doctors.

Agnes and John try to find comfort in their religion and convince themselves that their son’s death is part of God’s plan, maintaining the typical Ghanaian practice of saving face and not placing blame on others.

But as John reflects on his son’s unfortunate case, he can’t help but let his thoughts about the ordeal slip.

“The boy died as a result of the operation,” he says dryly. “That’s all there is to it.”

By an Anonymous Correspondent*

Photo courtesy of Jackie Matthews/Radio Free Europe

BISHKEK—On August 31st, 2011, Kyrgyzstan celebrates twenty years of independence from Soviet rule. While the Kyrgyz have made great strides towards democratization in that time, they still have a long way to go. Most developed democracies and republics have demonstrated at least some progress in women’s rights, if not fully accepted women as first class citizens – empowered, say, to choose their life partner. In Kyrgyzstan, this is not always the case.

So if you’re a woman, simply read on. If you’re not, try and imagine you are for a moment: You’re young – maybe 19 or 20 – and your whole life lies ahead of you. One evening, you’re walking home from work, or class, or even a night out with friends. Out of nowhere, a car pulls up and four men emerge with purposeful speed, grab you, and throw you inside. You’ll now spend the remainder of your evening fighting for your life. Not literally, of course. You’re not going to die. You’re simply going to be fighting to hold onto everything you have ever had – your freedom, your ability to choose, your right to an opinion – mustering all your strength to resist a room full of elderly women soliciting conformity and coercing consent. Should you fail in resisting properly, should you give in to their threats, you will be forced to marry a man you have never met, face rape on your initial night together (if not longer), bear his children, clean his home, cook his meals, and be his obedient wife.

However ridiculous the scenario sounds, for women in Kyrgyzstan, this traditional practice is a real and ever-pressing concern – as many as half of all marriages in the country happen this way, and only a select few are able to muster the necessary courage, when faced with intense cultural pressure, to say no.

This reductive and somewhat simplistic rendering of the situation is generally called some variation of bride kidnapping, bridenapping, bride capture, or bride theft. While each word has its own contextual understanding in the English language, none defines the cultural practice accurately .[i]  In order to avoid confusion, I will refer to it in Kyrgyz: “kyz ala kachuu,” which literally translates as “take a girl and run.”[ii] This historical cultural practice, though banned during Soviet rule, has been on the rise since Kyrgyzstan attained independence in 1991.[iii] Barbara Ayres distinguishes between four different types of bride abduction: ceremonial capture, mock bride theft, wife raiding and genuine bride theft.

Ceremonial capture takes place within the context of a formal courtship between a man and a woman. In this case, the woman and her family already know it’s coming, and having accepted the man and his family’s proposal, are merely adhering to the tradition. This is not a kidnapping at all, but is still classified as ala kachuu. Mock bride theft involves a woman conspiring in her own kidnapping with a man she already knows, in order to avoid marrying the person to whom her parents have betrothed her.[iv] Though the latter has risen in the past two decades,[v] these two scenarios are less common in Kyrgyzstan.

The most common cases fall within the confines of wife raiding or genuine bride theft, neither of which are consensual. “Wife raiding involves a daring attack in which the men from one community jointly steal women from another community. With genuine bride theft, the groom targets a specific woman, usually from his own community; the groom’s family provides the bride’s family with an apology or compensation; and the groom’s family usually establishes affinal relations with the bride’s family after the abduction.” [vi]  In Kyrgyzstan, the man’s family sends him on this mission and awaits his return with his bride-to-be for a celebration. He and his friends then go to a city, or surrounding metropolitan town, spot a suitable young woman, and use either force or deception to abduct her and take her to his family’s home. In most cases, the woman has never met her captor, likely her soon-to-be husband. Upon arrival at the young man’s home, the woman is brought into a room filled with ejays (elder women of the family), whose mission is to pressure the girl to accept by wearing a white veil over her head (signifying her willingness to marry), and write a letter to her parents informing them of her choice.[vii] In some cases, the girl concedes immediately, realizing that she is powerless to these elderly women, as Kyrgyz tradition and etiquette demands she show adequate respect to her elders. In other cases, she struggles.

A posed photo from the Kyz Korgon Institute, an NGO that campaigns to eliminate the tradition

Some girls have struggled for as long as ten hours before relenting. Take a moment to imagine that – struggling for ten hours in a room full of women, all of whom are either shaming yours and your family’s names, highlighting the many reasons why your refusal will preclude you from ever marrying, laying in the doorway,[viii] or going so far as to threaten suicide, all while physically restraining you until you accept the veil. Needless to say, few ever last that long. It’s exhausting. Furthermore, with each passing hour of resistance, her chances of staying throughout the night increase, at which point, she is assumed to have engaged in sexual activity and lost her virginity.[ix] Regardless of the duration, once she accepts the veil, the local mullah is alerted, comes over to acquire the new couple’s signatures, and according to Islamic law, blesses the marriage as legitimate. Next comes the consummation, whereby most cases are considered rape, at least on the first night together.[x]

This is where the flexible definition of the term “consensual” complicates the issue. According to Kadyr Malikov, director of the Religion, Law and Policy research center in Bishkek, “kidnapping or marrying without agreement is a big sin… Islam tries to regulate the practice by only marrying couples who both agree.”[xi] Thus, while she may have been “kidnapped” in the most traditional sense, by accepting the headscarf and signing the official documents, the woman has thereby granted her consent. Additionally, while Kyrgyz Law deems non-consensual kidnapping illegal,[xii] there is little or no evidence of active enforcement, especially given that the victim’s signature extra-legally officiates her consent.[xiii] In effect, unless she is able to escape or alert the police of her abduction, the only way out is to refuse acceptance. Successful refusal, however, conjures a myriad of new problems, including intense cursing and shaming employed by the boy’s family, unending whispers among the community (tarnishing her family name), and the possibility that potential suitors will think her, at best, as a disobedient woman; at worst, impure and tainted. All these are but a few of the pressures women must consider throughout the decision-making process. This would explain why only 17% of abducted women are able to successfully resist.[xiv]

Yet, it is important to mention that men are not entirely to blame in this seemingly barbaric practice, even if they have the obvious upper-hand in Kyrgyz society. Similar to the societal pressures of public and familial scorn that women face, a young man is subjected to intense coaxing, if not berating from the family ejays, who insist that he go out and return with his bride. Should he fail, he too will be subject to a similar shame; though his, obviously, won’t result in a life of servitude. It is also important to point out that some women claim to be content with the arrangement. According to Bubusara Ryskulova, director of the Sezim Crisis Center for Women in Bishkek, “Other women, typically older women… convince the girls to do it… encouraging the practice to flourish. They say, ‘see, I also got married this way and I’m happy.’ “[xv] This not only complicates the issue further, but is also employed as a tactic in convincing the girl to stay.

Why do men or families engage in this practice? According to international development and human rights expert Dr. Lori Hanrahan, the spike in kidnapping since 1991 serves as a positive Kyrgyz cultural identity marker that the Soviets denied the Kyrgyz.[xvi]  Philadelphia University sociology professor Russell Kleinbach, who has conducted extensive research on kyz ala kachuu, poses two opposing theories on the function and recent surge of kidnappings. The first, “a means for young couples to exercise their independence from arranged marriages and high bride prices; the second… part of the reestablishment of a male dominant Kyrgyz identity in a period of political-economic and social turmoil.”[xvii] Anara Niyazova, head of the law department at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavonic University, attributes this rise to a lack of dating skills, since male rural youth see no other marriage strategies. “Village men hardly ever interact with women. They sit in a sheep market and when they see somebody they like, they will just take them. (Kidnapping) is caused by an absence of dating skills.”[xviii]

Still another theory delves deep into the heart of the Kyrgyz family. In a twisted but seemingly rational way, the ejays are enablers, seeking a replacement for their subservient role within the family. The opportunity to cash in for years of hard labor serves as an underlying motivation for such adamant coercion. In short, it’s now their turn to be waited on and treated with the respect of an elder. By this logic, many Kyrgyz families not only adhere to the practice of ala kachuu, but in fact, rely on it. Culturally, it is a never-ending cycle designed to free older women from the bonds of servitude, while enslaving younger women, who will bear children, serve the family, and eventually, take on the role of ejay. Ironically, this supports the claim that young men too are victims to this practice, lending credence to the age-old argument that “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Kleinbach’s survey of 1,322 Kyrgyz marriages has shown that as many as one half were a result of kidnapping, and at least one third of women within Kyrgyzstan were kidnapped without consent.[xix]  However, these statistics are not only skewed and lowered by women who officially conscript the act, but also potentially tampered. The former is an accepted fact, while the latter, though open to debate, is not implausible. Why would a nation attempting to implement a strong civil society, sustainable community development initiatives and effective rule of law want the reputation for wanton disregard and limited enforcement of this culturally specific human rights violation?

Whatever the case, one thing is certain: ala kachuu is in clear violation of both Kyrgyz domestic laws and a woman’s inalienable rights. Article 1 of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women states, ” ‘violence against women’ means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”[xx] According to Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “women of full age have the right to marry… equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. All marriages shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.”[xxi] Article 4 stipulates that, “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude.”[xxii] Additionally, ala kachuu has domestic violence implications. Kyrgyz law defines domestic violence as “any intentional act by one family member directed towards another family member if such act limits (the) victim’s legal rights and freedoms, inflicts physical or mental suffering and causes moral harm; or contains a threat to the physical or mental development of a minor member of the family.”[xxiii]

Women in Kyrgyzstan protest bride kidnapping. Photo from the Kyz-Korgon Institute

However, there may be hope. Though ala kachuu has received some coverage in the past decade, two recent suicides over the past 6 months have afforded this cultural phenomenon greater international attention. As is the case with any nation, developing or otherwise, reform must come from within. Perhaps the May, 2011, protests in Karakol, capital city of Issyk-Kul oblast (a region in eastern Kyrgyzstan), are positive signs of that reform. Karakol was home to the two victims: Venera Kasymalieva and Nurzat Kalykova, both 20-year-old students who committed suicide after being abducted and forced into marriage.[xxiv] During this protest, NGO workers and local participants (including men) called upon community government leaders and Kyrgyz authorities, to put an end to the outdated practice.

So what does the future hold for the women of Kyrgyzstan? Ala kachuu is a problem that is deeply seeded into the Kyrgyz psyche, as “cultural values related to honor and shame have been mobilized in a way that justifies the popular view that a woman should ‘stay’ after being abducted, and views (that) help men assert further control over female mobility and female sexuality.”[xxv] Whether or not this can change remains unknown, especially since doing so would require an overhaul of the entire society, starting with the Kyrgyz family. This is no easy feat in a male-dominated culture where families are run like businesses.  What is known is that women are still being taken against their will, and forced into extra-legal marriage agreements that violate their right to choice. If the Kyrgyz ever hope to move forward in the developing world, and take their place amidst nations defined by the freedom of choice and thought, this system will need to evolve. Perhaps the next twenty years will usher in this new era.

*The Toronto Review of International Affairs grants anonymity to contributing correspondents whose professional obligations preclude independent publishing. This correspondent is an international development worker in Kyrgyzstan.

A sea of flowers in Oslo, Norway

Oslo, Norway—Our regular path from Oslo city centre up to St. Hanshaugen and Bjølsen passes through the core of our vibrant democracy, past the offices of our prime minister and several government ministries. This past Friday, shortly after we arrived back home from Rwanda, that block was blown to pieces by a car bomb, as Anders Behring Breivik went on an ideological rampage that left 76 people dead. After spending a lot of our time in Africa, our peaceful capital suddenly looked all too familiar: It resembled the sights we see in war-ravaged capital cities, other cities, cities far away.

And now, instead of a happy homecoming welcoming us back to Norway, we were instead trying to locate and get a hold of loved ones. The phone network was overwhelmed, so for a long time we awaited replies of people we know use this same route regularly, or who were on the island of Utøya, where Breivik was systematically murdering politically engaged youth, dressed as a police officer. Facebook quickly became a very efficient way of spreading updates, along the lines of: “I am okay, so is this and that person,” or “I finally heard from so and so on Utøya, he got out alive.” We have also received numerous messages, phone calls, emails and greetings from friends and colleagues abroad, wanting assurances of our physical well-being after the attacks, and offering their condolences and comfort. We have friends who only barely survived the Oslo attack and the shootings on the island, we have close friends who lost loved ones, we have close friends in other ministries who were evacuated, and we believe we speak for all of Norway when we say this is a sorrowful and horrible time for us all.

22 July 2011

There will forever be a before and an after 22 July 2011 here in Norway. A small country, a peaceful people, a prosperous nation, involved in spreading our peaceful, democratic values to other less peaceful areas – and then suddenly, we were also under attack. But, as Aslak Sira Myhre writes in his article in the Guardian on 24 July, “The terror of Norway has not come from Islamic extremists. Nor has it come from the far left, even though both these groups have been accused time after time of being the inner threat to our ‘way of living.’ Up to and including the terrifying hours in the afternoon of 22 July, the little terror my country has experienced has come from the far right.”

A memorial march in Sømna municipality, in Eivind's village

At 3:22 pm Friday 22 July, a bomb went off in central Oslo, shattering windows and lighting fires in buildings that included the Prime Minister’s office. As Myhre does himself, and as we also must admit, we all immediately, when the news broke, assumed this was al Qaeda or a similar organization. Norway is participating in military operations in both Afghanistan and Libya, we have publications that reprinted the cartoon drawings of the Prophet Mohamed, and we have been told, time and time again, that terror may strike in our peaceful nation as well. Several researchers, reporters, experts and others were quick to say that it was likely to be a jihadist group behind the attacks, while police and political figures were good at repeating people should refrain from jumping to conclusions.

Then, at 5.27 pm, the police got a message that a man was shooting at children and youth at the summer camp for the Labour party’s youth division (AUF) at Utøya, an island not far from Oslo, where approximately 650 people (mostly youngsters) were gathered for a week. The reports that started coming from survivors were horrific, and it became obvious the two events were linked. One man, in a police uniform, was coldly, calmly going around murdering children and youth. And the message from those who managed to get off the island was clear: the man, coldly assassinating those on the island looked Nordic. So many of us were surprised. So many of us thought: “So it wasn’t a jihadist group? What is this? This is one of our own?” Media, afterward, were criticised for being too quick to judge, and to blame the Muslim community. Like many others, we must admit that we ourselves were also too quick to judge.

Right wing extremism and the need for debate

The police say that 76 people died following the two incidents. Breivik, 32 was arrested by the police on the island, and it soon became clear he had spent 9 years preparing for the attacks based on an extremist right wing ideology. He had distributed a 1,500-page document online, where he wrote: “What most people still do not understand is that the ongoing Islamicisation of Europe cannot be stopped before one gets to grip with the political doctrine which makes it possible.” So he did not go after the immigrant population, but to the core of our government structure – to the left wing socialist Labor party and the Youth wing of this party.

Flowers at a memorial in Sømna municipality

As the BBC’s Gavin Hewitt said in his commentary 25 July: “Across Europe there is a strong and growing concern about immigration. It is partly fuelled by unemployment but also has its roots in threatened identity. (…) With globalization, national identity seems to have become more important. The nation state stubbornly remains the focus of most people’s identity. And so nationalist parties have made gains in many parts of Europe. There are frequent expressions of concern about the growing influence of these parties. Others say that they provide a useful channel for the feelings of frustration and alienation.”

Hewitt further emphasizes that both Angela Merkel and David Cameron have publicly questioned multiculturalism: “The danger, of course, is that such statements can encourage extremism. Others say that in Europe the debate needs to be had, openly and transparently about immigration and multiculturalism. It cannot be hidden away because it feeds a paranoia but it is one of the most sensitive issues in Europe today and is rising up the agenda.” An open, but sensitive debate on these issues is vital to combat ideologies such as the one Breivik expresses in his 1,500 page document, and media bears a great responsibility here.

The debate on immigration and multiculturalism is obviously sensitive, a topic in which most mainstream political parties do not wish to engage. In Norway, the right wing party Fremskrittspartiet (the Progress party), has been leading the conversation, criticizing and discussing immigration related topics, at times even very legitimate aspects that immigrants themselves agree need to be discussed. The centrist to right wing parties who instigate these debates gain clear electoral ground from stirring up these issues, as we can see in many European countries. The lack of broader, more nuanced political debate shoulders at least part of the blame for an increased lack of tolerance in European countries, since the polarized debates prompt deadlock that yields no clear solutions and right wing extremism simply ripples outward through the polity and affects viewpoints beyond where it originated. An easily reached conclusion from this could be that large political parties need to engage in a sensitive and open debate on both the positive and negative, the challenges and the rewards, that stem from a multicultural Europe.

More humanity

The German newspaper Der Spiegel’s Anna Reimann commended the Norwegian people for our reactions following the attack, saying that even in our deepest sorrow, Norwegians do not want revenge: “Instead of retaliation, the Norwegians now want to have more humanity, more democracy. It is indicative of the strength of this small nation.” And so we stand united and firm against such atrocities, here in our little country. Monday evening, in thousands of villages and cities of Norway, we all gathered in the streets and parks with flowers. At our little village in the north of Norway, where we were as the tragedy unfolded, the mayor spoke, and people gathered with flowers, candles and compassion for each other, the survivors and the lost ones. In Oslo, 150,000 people gathered with roses, and the city is now decorated, absolutely everywhere, with flowers.

Outside the bombsite area in Oslo, after the explosions.

We are meeting these horrendous acts of violence and extremism with a response of united values: Our continued and steadfast belief in and deep appreciation of peace, human rights and equality. As an AUF survivor from Utøya told CNN: “If one man can show that much hatred, imagine how much love all of us can show together.” But, let us not forget how different our reaction to this may have been if it had been carried out by a jihadist group, rather than by an ethnic Norwegian. It is likely we would have answered with more fear, more hatred, and more separatism toward all Muslims, of which more than 99 per cent would have been just as appalled by those acts as they are by these.

It was arranged much in the same way as anything else in Beijing: at the last minute. A friend of a friend was subbing as a journalist for a food industry website owner whose regular interviewer was off taking care of personal issues. “You have a camera right?” popped up in the little orange glowing window on my Gmail page. “Want to photograph an event tomorrow? Free wine.”

The friend of a friend needed a “photographer,” someone with what at least looked like a serviceable camera to snap a few pictures of the interview subject. My role was superficial – my presence and equipment were required to make it look like the website owner ran the kind of operation that employed a proper photographer. Knowing that this type of random offer in Beijing often leads to a wonderfully bizarre day to write home about, as well as free alcohol and food, I agreed. My friend sent on the contact information, and 24 hours later I showed up at Brasserie Flo, an upscale French restaurant sat atop a gaudy KTV (karaoke) parlor. It was also across a rutted, gravelly parking lot from the shell of an old bus that had since been converted into a bar known for sketchy drug connections and reggae music, which moved randomly every few years from one section of the city’s entertainment district to another.

The interviewee was cosmetics and culture mogul Yue-Sai Kan of Yue-Sai Kan Cosmetics Ltd., the country’s first cosmetics company, and current honorary vice chairman of L’Oréal China.

Yue-Sai Kan is widely credited as the first to bring Western-style cosmetics to China, and also one of the first to introduce Western cultural elements into a country that was just beginning to open up back in the early 1980s. Currently she sits atop a substantial fortune, and is known as a businesswoman, media darling and sought-after socialite. Her current project is heading up the Miss China Universe Competition, and she had scheduled a wine tasting for the contestants (her “girls” as she calls them) for the evening.

The night was a stiflingly sultry mix of pollution and humidity, and as I stood in the front bar entrance trying to smooth down my hair from the mushroom cloud it had become, the procession started.

First, one strikingly tall, pretty, somewhat awkward-looking young woman clad in a skintight black minidress strode through the door, followed by another, then another, then another. In a country where the height of the average woman barely crests five feet, tall women stick out, causing a stir and turning heads whenever they glide by. A friend of mine, an art history student whose family hails from California via Taiwan, has dubbed them “Chinese gazelles,” a fitting term for a breed of woman who is as thin as she is tall, and whose movements often skirt the border between graceful and skittish. The Chinese women around me oohhed and aahed, and reached for their cellphones to snap pictures of the procession. I would have also, seeing as I had the proper camera to do it, but I was too busy excitedly typing a text message into my own phone: “Chinese gazelles!” I trilled. “A whole herd!”

After the gazelles had been seated at banquet tables on an outdoor terrace, the interview party, which consisted of a handful Chinese PR reps; an interpreter named Momo, who was on hand just in case Yue-Sai Kan needed help, though her English is fluent; the interviewer, a young white kid born and raised in Hong Kong and fluent in at least six languages including Cantonese, Japanese, Mandarin and Swedish; the website owner; and myself. We were shuffled off to a small side room to await Yue-Sai Kan, and the drinks we had ordered. Yue-Sai Kan, like our drinks, took forever to get there. The alcohol arrived first, and after downing a glass of red wine, I picked up my camera and headed to the tasting outside. The contestants, who hail from all over China, mostly work with modeling agencies or are otherwise similarly employed. Many of them, as Yue-Sai Kan explained later in the interview, came from small places, villages and towns where good manners were never a priority, and exposure to international culture was slim to none. Her job, as she said she saw it, was to provide her girls with polishing, teaching them the basics of how to behave in a high class environment in order to give them a leg up in life.

As the maitre’d explained in gorgeously French-accented English about the wine, how to smell, taste and drink it, a Chinese interpreter told the contestants roughly what he was saying. He was an amusing and entertaining host, liberally sprinkling his demonstration with saucy jokes and innuendos, all of which were lost in translation as the interpreter, whether through choice or lack of comprehension, gave only the barest of his instructions. The contestants were hounded by a flock of aggressive local photographers—I got my feet stepped on more than once, and elbowed out of the way a couple of times—and many spent a good deal of time primping and looking deeply into their lenses, giving only the slightest bit of attention to what they were supposed to be learning about French wine.  They were all very pretty, but only a few looked like what I imagine a successful model needs to look like, with cheekbones that could slice steak and a facial structure that suggested a beauty so unique it would be difficult to replicate. Soon after the first plates of salad arrived on the tables, so did Yue-Sai Kan, and I scuttled back to the small room to take pictures of her for the interview.

To say Yue-Sai Kan knows how to pander to the media would be an understatement. The woman knows exactly what to say, how to say it, who to say it to, and how to angle her head for the best light on her face for the camera. She’s a real pro, and I was impressed. The interview took about half an hour, and switched back and forth between Mandarin and English. At one point Yue-Sai Kan remarked that marriage was unnecessary, still a radical thing to say in today’s China, leading to a smattering of nervous giggles from the women in the room.

Their discomfort prompted Yue-Sai Kan to embark on a mini-lecture of how a woman needs to be able to take care of herself first, to be able to make her own money and keep her own house. If she can do all of these things, Yue-Sai Kan reasoned, then a man was just another lovely addition to a life, and not a necessity. The feminist in me (and the inner drunk on her second or third glass of wine) wanted to stand up and applaud such sentiments, while the cynic took aim at a woman who was bringing beauty pageants, and all of the judging of physical beauty and nastiness that they entail, to China.

Though she talks a good game on female emancipation, Yue-Sai Kan teaching contestants in the Miss China Universe pageant about manners and how to behave in social settings is more likely to make them better marriage material for rich men than self-sufficient seductresses managing their own affairs.

The interview was soon over, Yue-Sai Kan and the gazelles left the building, and our motley crew was shown to a table for a free French dinner. It was nice, I was drunk, and it was the beginning of an interesting evening.

By Mathieu Labrèche, Contributing Correspondent

Carne Ross was a rising star in the British Foreign Office and was on the fast-track to becoming an ambassador. A shrewd, worldly and enthusiastic young diplomat, he navigated the uneven landscape of international diplomacy and global affairs with remarkable expertise and sharp insight. He previously worked at the UK embassy in Bonn, Germany before moving to the UK delegation on the United Nations’ Security Council, where he was the mission’s Middle East expert.

Carne Ross in a supplied photo.

Ross resigned from his post after four and a half years in the delegation because of Britain’s decision to go to war in Iraq. The experience seemed to have set off a crisis of conscience that proved more than he could stand for in a frustrating, although distinguished, 15-year diplomatic career. He also gave evidence in secret to an official inquiry into the Iraq war which directly contradicted the British government’s justification for the war and intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. In 2004, he founded Independent Diplomat (ID), a non-profit diplomatic advisory group — the world’s first.

ID aims to resolve or prevent conflict by enabling disadvantaged and marginalized governments and political groups to engage effectively in diplomatic processes. They offer professional services, including: political analysis, diplomatic technique, international law and media strategy. The group has no political agenda of its own and its advice is driven solely by the needs of its clients. It is not connected to any government or international institution — it funds its operations through a mix of donor contribution and client fees.

Ross’s most recent book, “The Leaderless Revolution: how ordinary people will take power and change politics in the 21st century” will be published by Simon & Schuster in September 2011 in the UK, and by Penguin in early 2012 in the US.  His personal blog is at CarneRoss.com, his weekly column “Power & Nations” is on the Guardian website, and you can follow him on Twitter.

He recently discussed a wide-range of contemporary geopolitical issues with The Toronto Review.

What are you up to these days and what’s new at Independent Diplomat (ID)?

We’re very busy with all of our projects. There are climate change talks going on at the moment in Bonn, where one of our advisors is a member of the delegation of the Marshall Islands and is helping the small island states make their way in that very complicated and difficult negotiation.

We’re also very engaged in Sudan where we’re advising the government of South Sudan — which is obviously at a critical moment with independence imminent. The North occupied the province of Abyei a few days ago, ejecting its permanent residents, and so there continues to be conflict between north and south just as the former is expected to become independent in July. Those are just two projects where we’re very busy.

Could you give me an anecdote about how Independent Diplomat’s negotiations actually work? Do you usually take on a new client; do research; fly out; settle out terms; fly back to New York; and advocate your client’s position to the UN? In other words, how does a typical ID case work?

It’s always different. Sometimes we’re approached directly by a government or a country. Sometimes we’re introduced through a third-party. More and more, other governments, former clients and political groups are recommending us to people who might benefit from our services.

One of our most recent clients was South Sudan, which heard about our work advising the Kosovo government before Kosovo’s independence — they approached us some time ago to ask if we could advise them. I flew to Juba and met with various leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and together we discussed their diplomatic needs. After some consideration, Independent Diplomat decided to take them on as a client.

I should stress that we will only take on those who adhere to the principles of democracy, international law and are not engaged in unlawful violence. So, in general, we’re trying to help the ‘good guys’ rather than the ‘bad guys’ — though that’s not always a straightforward choice.

It seems to me that Independent Diplomat is not a lobby in any way. If I understand correctly, you provide expertise and strategy in order for clients to represent themselves and their interests?

Yes, that’s correct. We don’t lobby for our clients. We’re not their advocates; they’re their own best advocates. We simply advise on the diplomatic scene as it affects them. We will also advise them about how best to insert their views into the international discussion about their country. Sometimes we will offer assistance with specific diplomatic tools to help our clients, perhaps communications at the UN Security Council or things like that. But we’re very much driven by the needs of our clients and their own requirements — we work for them.

On July 9 South Sudan will become a newly independent state. Indeed, it may be the most important test awaiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this summer. However, the new state will need a huge amount of UN support to get it going, which, hitherto, has not brought out the best in the organization with its huge bureaucracy, competing priorities and so-called “integrated” planning process. How should the Secretary-General cut through the endless turf wars at the UN to offer the Security Council a compelling vision of what it can achieve in South Sudan?

The situation is indeed challenging and fast-moving as the situation on the ground is fluid, not least in Abyei and South Kordofan – another border area where the North has used violence. The UN is not very good at fast-moving situations and there’s evidence of clear failures recently — for instance peacekeepers in Abyei stayed in their barracks rather than confronting Northern troops and ensuring the protection of civilians.

For the future UN mission, they key thing for the South is that the mission continue to observe and ensure the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between north and south Sudan – particularly to monitor the borders. That should provide a very compelling case to the UN and to the international community for how the mission should be oriented in the future. Nobody wants to see a resumption of civil war and the UN can help prevent that — that should be its goal. But it will need continued close attention and serious resources; some countries want to take the chance of a new mandate for the UN to cut down the mission. I think this would be a mistake and would send a dangerous signal to Khartoum that the world is backing off.

A new breed of diplomat is slowly beginning to emerge — equipped with a backpack and a Blackberry instead of a briefcase and a private chauffeur. Sometimes referred to as the “guerrilla diplomat”, he possesses autonomy, agility and adaptability to perform complex tasks with an ear-to-the-ground on Main Street instead of pomp in the banquet hall. Is this the kind of diplomatic technique you advocate at Independent Diplomat?

I know that mainstream and conventional foreign ministries like to present themselves as very much “with the times.” But, from what I see, orthodox diplomacy at foreign ministries has not changed very much — it can’t. The idea of a diplomat being autonomous with a Blackberry and a backpack, well, that’s just not possible in the way that orthodox government diplomacy operates. Any diplomat has to refer to their capital and they have to reflect the wishes of their government. So that sort of romantic notion of an autonomous diplomat on the ground is somewhat unrealistic.

At the same time, there has always been diplomats running around on the ground and, in some ways, they had much more autonomy in the past than they do today. Modern communications mean that diplomats can communicate in almost real-time with their capital, and the capital often demands that they do so. Therefore, diplomats are in some ways even more tied to the center than once they were. Ironically, old fashioned, slow communications allowed diplomats greater autonomy.  If you can only report by a despatch sent home by sea, you get a lot of room to decide policy yourself on the ground. That’s a luxury denied modern diplomats who are required to tell their capitals of almost every detail of their activities, and reflect their capital’s views to the letter.

The Internet has deterritorialized social, economic and political spaces. While not happening at the same pace everywhere, time and distance, as barriers to human interaction and exchange, are disappearing. How can modern diplomats operate in these unstructured horizontal spaces as opposed to the familiar vertical mosaic of foreign ministries, where official designations and hierarchic social relations are the norm?

First off, I think that the observation about the Internet is absolutely correct — there is a deterriotorialization of these spaces. But I think some qualifications are necessary.

Number one, the Internet is only one territory and there are many real territories still out there which operate according to very much more established rules. But for diplomats to operate in these unstructured spaces, as you call it, I think it’s very difficult for them. I can think of several examples of diplomats that get into trouble through their personal blogs or tweets where they’re trying to sound authentic and up-to-the-minute in a very fast moving Internet conversation. It’s increasingly difficult for hierarchical structures to allow diplomats that kind of freedom, which inevitably brings with it the risk of mistakes or people taking something other than the official line. For instance, a British ambassador to Lebanon got into trouble when in her blog she seemed to praise the former head of Hezbollah when he died — this happened a year or two ago. There were immediate protests from Israel and others around the world that she had said this. Ultimately, she was forced to retract the statement and the British government had to apologize for what she said.

The Internet is inherently personal, de-institutionalized, fragmented and does not lend itself to official communications well. I think there’s a lot of nonsense being talked about “e-diplomacy” and tweeting diplomats which doesn’t withstand close scrutiny. An official spokesman sending out official statements via Twitter or on Facebook is very little different from the official spokesman doing so by press release or press conference of the old kind.

Are these hierarchic social relations still the norm in the “e-world”?

It’s very interesting because it’s really up to the leadership or foreign ministries to determine the tone of “e-communications” like Facebook posts and tweets. The Swedish foreign minister, for instance, tweets very interesting, authentic, clearly personal and up-to-minute thoughts. He obviously has the confidence to do that. But the tweets from other foreign ministers and ministries tend to be much more bland, conventional and really don’t add much to the traditional discourse of diplomacy. All foreign ministries are intrinsically and stiflingly hierarchical, offering little genuine autonomy to the “lower-downs” to communicate their real thoughts.  Foreign ministries, and governments, are required to be hierarchical.

The notion of a disaggregrated, free-flowing organization with highly autonomous officials is inimical to our contemporary notions of national government. There is no fit between these ideas

I think that the Internet, by its very nature of pluralism and many voices, clashes with the rather more simplified world that governments used to think they inhabited.

The so-called “Arab spring” has shown the world that revolutions can occur without prominent or charismatic leaders. Indeed, the only necessary pre-condition in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, to some extent, was the shared feeling of ‘enough is enough’. What kind of future do you see for leaderless revolutions in the twenty-first century?

I think they’re the way of the future. My book talks about the decline of governments as effective actors in a globalized world. Governments are less and less able to control and arbitrate the forces that most affect our lives and I think the evidence is very clear of that. Economic and commodity price volatility, rampant climate change, borderless wars, you name it — most of the important phenomena that concern us are clearly less and less in the grip of governments, whether  national or  in multinational institutions.

What then is the answer? Do we just give in to emerging chaos? No. We have to take action. Spontaneous individual action is, as ever, the most powerful way to change our immediate circumstances and to influence others. Social science is very clear that the most influential agents on our behaviour are those around us. Also, network researchers have shown that the actions of one person or group can very rapidly influence the whole system. This offers a real promise of political change, but only if people take action into their own hands.

Intrinsically, and most effectively, these actions should not look to form hierarchies or institutions — they have to be spontaneous responses to concerns that are deeply felt; spontaneous networks. Equally, their objectives should be negotiated with those affected and above all they should be non-violent. I’m not proposing violent anarchism, but I am proposing that effective change will come less and less from governments and more and more from individuals and groups acting and co-operating spontaneously: self-organized government, if you like.

If a prominent figure or grouping would act as leaders would that, in essence, replicate the status quo political order?

I think there’s a belief in a certain model where if we imagine that we have all the right politicians everything will be all right. I think it’s clear that this dream is bankrupt and we’ve given ourselves a free pass. We’ve committed ourselves – quite foolishly – to the idea that the only real political action required of us is to vote once every five years or whenever. Politicians feed this presumption, which is seriously mistaken.

Is Independent Diplomat doing any work on the Arab spring and the swell in popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East?

Unfortunately, I can’t talk about that in public.

NATO’s effort in Libya risks slipping into a messy and prolonged stalemate. The West’s very vocal pressure on Muammar Gaddafi to step down, together with a fractured coalition and a weakening rebel movement, leaves no end in sight. How can an impasse be averted and what kind of negotiation strategy should be employed to create mutually beneficial opportunities?

I’m not sure what realistic opportunities there are at this point. At the same time, the stability and the overall well-being of the Libyan people would be best served through a peaceful negotiated outcome whereby the leadership in Tripoli agrees to step down and allow democracy. If that is not clearly agreed there will be prolonged instability even if there were a ceasefire to temporarily stop the current conflict. At the moment, the rebel forces are saying very clearly they will not accept any outcome which allows Gaddafi to stay. Given his record and treatment of all opposition – which has been violent and inhumane to the extreme – one could understand that position. At the same time, the belief that Gaddafi will be overthrown and that peace and democracy will break out all over Libya is clearly based as much on hope as realistic expectation.

The ideal should be an agreement rapidly to be reached after which Gaddafi were to step down. This would allow both of the best long-term outcomes for Libya — mainly democracy, but also more immediately the preservation of stability. The latter could be endangered by a violent overthrow.

There seems to be a certain reticence in imposing measures on Syria in response to the government’s crackdown on its own population — in particular, because China and Russia refuse to condemn the Assad government. Are the UN and the broader western world suffering from a “Libya hangover”, or are there legitimate concerns in drawing up binding resolutions to restrict the Syrian government’s belligerent behaviour?

I certainly think that the UN Security Council’s inability to agree a substantive – or indeed any – resolution for Syria is largely due to Russian, Chinese and indeed others’ reservations that seem largely to be based on Libya rather than what’s actually going on in Syria, which is perverse. The Russians clearly feel that the Western allies overstepped the military authority that they were given by the Security Council on Libya — which, by the way, I don’t think is a legitimate complaint as the Russians knew very well what they were signing up to. I think it’s illegitimate to use the decision over one country as a way of making a point about an earlier decision concerning somewhere else.

At the same time, the Chinese and Russian reservations are based on a fear that any resolution might eventually lead to further resolutions authorizing military intervention. I have to say there’s no evidence that justifies such a fear. The Western allies have been very clear that military intervention is not on the cards in the case of Syria and the pro-democracy demonstrators on the ground have been equally emphatic in rejecting it.

All that said, I think these are poor excuses for the Security Council not to send a very clear and robust message to the Assad regime to stop its repression of its people. There’s no reason why the Security Council cannot pass targeted measures sanctioning members of the regime and thus indicating very clearly that their repressive behaviour is unacceptable. But maybe there is a secret behind this too. Perhaps China and Russia – by no means perfect democracies – are unwilling to see a precedent or trend emerge in the Security Council of so-called “interference” in a state’s sovereign internal affairs.

The private sector poses a serious challenge to state-run diplomacy. There is a general trend of ‘disintermediation’ where multinational corporations – empowered by new communication technologies and budgets larger than those of many sovereign nations – can create their own foreign policies and deploy representatives in offices around the world. Will the privatization of foreign policy and diplomacy eventually hollow out the state’s control over these areas?

Well, I think that the word privatization is a little bit confusing. Diplomacy is a broad umbrella term; but ‘conventional’ diplomacy is still very much about government-to-government interaction, both bilateral and multilateral. There’s a great deal of that still going on and there’s no sign of it being privatized or contracted out to private companies to conduct on government’s behalf, as has been the case, by contrast, in some military affairs where, more’s the pity, private contractors have become almost commonplace. So I think the phraseology that diplomacy is being privatized is a little bit misleading.

At the same time, you’re quite right that commercial companies or multinational companies play a very important political role in their interactions around world, both with populations, other companies and states. In the diplomacy on Sudan, which we’ve been observing very closely through our work, there is no doubt that large multinational companies have had a significant influence. The border areas between North and South Sudan, for instance, hold large oil deposits and some of the oil companies are very active there and wield considerable political influence with both parties. Everywhere large multinational companies wield influence and their decisions have great political consequence. Yet, by and large, they’re not held to account for those decisions and of course their decisions are not transparent either.

As non-state actors, banks and financial institutions have exerted an impressive amount of influence over nation-state policies and legal frameworks, for instance, with deregulation and resisting capital control. How can states re-assert control over transnational banking institutions whose power and influence has grown exponentially?

That’s a complicated question which requires quite a long answer. In a recent article I wrote for The Guardian I argued that national authorities aren’t able to exert sufficient control over multinational entities. Banks or financial institutions are able to move their operations from state to state according to where the laws are most convenient and are able to threaten the removal of their business from any particular state if laws the banks regard as too onerous are imposed. That is notwithstanding the undoubted influence that large corporations and banks already have on their national legislatures in any case through their own lobbying and influence — this is well-known.

I don’t think that multilateral governmental institutions are yet able effectively to tackle this problem. The legislation emerging from bodies like the G20 or the Basel Committee, in terms of financial regulation, is inadequate. It has been judged so by impartial experts who assess the systemic risk in the banking sector — a vulnerability which revealed itself through the 2008 crash.

So what’s the answer? I think part of the answer is identifying what is not the answer, namely national or multilateral legislation. Instead, we should think of better solutions — these might include individual consumers making their own choices about where to deposit their money and choosing more responsible institutions over others. There are banks which operate far more responsible lending systems, or where they may be co-operatively owned by their customers. These types of models offer a greater prospect of long-term stability than the large commercial banks, inadequately regulated by the state, with which we’re more familiar.

But this question needs further examination, including by those more expert than me. However, by and large, the current regulatory system is not sufficient.

What is the main takeaway from the WikiLeaks experience and how has it changed state-run diplomacy?

I’d argue that the WikiLeaks release of the diplomatic cables is a very significant moment in the history of diplomacy. I think it sends a message to governments that no data stored electronically – and there is almost no other kind of data – is ultimately safe.

Electronic data “wants to be free”. It is now that much easier to transmit this kind of data into leaks than the forms of data that preceded it. My hope is that this will send a message to governments that if they have to presume that their data may ultimately become public, then the consequence of that should be that they must ensure the private facts of what they have done diplomatically measure up to their public rhetoric about that diplomacy. No longer can governments’ private actions diverge from what they’re publicly claiming, as undoubtedly the WikiLeaks cables do show in several instances.

I don’t think that governments have got this message yet. I think that a lot of them still think that if they work a bit harder and glue up their USB slots in their computers or classify documents more strictly then they will prevent this happening to them. But I have no doubt there will be more of this and I think eventually governments will realize that transparency will be enforced upon them, if not chosen by them.  It might be preferable for them to choose sensible, responsible models of transparency before the scourge of leaks affect them.  But this means that they have to change.

My experience in diplomacy is that it is far too secret — the worst decisions are made in secret, often by very small and under-informed groups of people. Above all, officials and governments should be held accountable for what they do. I’ve been involved in several conflicts including one – Iraq – where gross distortions were presented to the public to justify a war that did not need to be fought, and to which there were very plausible alternatives which were not properly considered, let alone debated in public. I think that is a pretty clear argument for greater transparency. Equally, I think that we should demand greater responsibility from those leaking the data. The responsibility to do no harm applies as much to them as it does to governments. I think much greater care should be taken by WikiLeaks and others to review data before it’s released and to do so in a responsible manner.

CAIRO—On the afternoon of January 28th, better known as the “Friday of Rage,” I went out for one of my daily reconnaissance walks, to see what would materialize after scattered peaceful protests were brutally quashed by police forces a few days earlier. Having spent the last few months in Cairo researching urban spatial politics, the ways in which people appropriate public urban space, and riots, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the events unfolding here. Just two days earlier, I was caught in a near-stampede near Midaan Issaaf downtown, where a peaceful protest of fifty people swelled into hundreds and culminated in a crackdown by the amn dawla (state security forces), who charged the crowd with sticks, water cannons and tear gas. As I turned the corner from my building in a shaabi (or popular) quarter of Cairo’s Agouza neighbourhood, I saw a deathly silent, traffic-free street, and a row of riot police blocking the entrance to the 15th of May bridge, one of the main access points to downtown Cairo and the all important Tahrir Square. Moments later, a steady stream of thousands emerged from down Gamaat al-Dowal street, chanting, walking peacefully but determinedly towards the blockade – men, women and children of all classes. There were families with children on their shoulders, educated young Egyptians, unemployed youth, veteran activists, labourers, local politicians, migrants from the south – the whole spectrum of Egyptian society.

No sooner had they approached than the police began to fire tear gas, beating back protesters who dared come too close. For almost four hours, the tear gas canisters shot into the crowds. The protesters turned back, injured, limp bodies carried to the sidelines; those who had been gassed went to the back and were replaced by comrades with tear-free eyes, and the march towards the bridge began anew. People had armed themselves with makeshift masks and scarves; many carried vinegar and onions to cut the sting of gas. Protesters were handing out water and vinegar and taking care of those who were injured. I watched as two older protesters dissuaded a group of teenagers from preparing firebombs, urging  “muzahara silmeyya” (peaceful protest), a refrain I heard many times in Tahrir Square over the next few days.  “Sawwari, sawwari,” they said. Take pictures. Show the world what Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is doing to the country’s peaceful citizens.

The next day police had disappeared entirely from Cairo’s streets. Prisoners had escaped the jails. And baltaggeya (vicious thugs proven to be in the pay of Mubarak) were looting and mugging residents. My neighbours warned me to barricade myself inside and exercise extreme caution. As curfew came into effect, locals came out to patrol the neighbourhood with pistols, shotguns, and other makeshift weapons – including our neighbour’s 12-year-old son brandishing a samurai sword and the petite local makwagi (a person who irons clothing) with a hastily constructed Molotov cocktail. In an inspiring display of solidarity, local shopkeepers kept prices low, neighbourhoods organized watch groups and citizens banded together to organize security in Tahrir and to clean the streets of Cairo. External observers and foreign media marveled at how Cairenes came together in a time of crisis, like it was a new development in what seemed to them an eternally inhospitable city. In reality, Cairenes have long been engaged in grassroots activism and activities to obtain services and fill in the gaps of their inadequate government’s public services.

Scholars (like Salwa Ismail, Diane Singerman, and Asef Bayat) have all written about how ordinary people are changing the Middle East, from Yemen to Morocco; that Islamist activism has elements common to all social movements; and that at the very heart of this activism is always an informal network, whose members share a constantly transitioning collective identity molded by the distinct cultural and (repressive) political contexts they inhabit.

The solidarity and community organization during the days of uncertainty following Egypt’s well-publicized protests were an echo of forms of activism already common in urban Middle Eastern settings. Understanding the nature of networking and social activism does much more to explain what happened during the ongoing Egyptian uprising than the rather shallow, reactionary analyses that point variously to external factors, a ticking-time bomb of Arab resentment, or the revolutionary power of the Internet and social networking media. Furthermore, the failure to recognize the origins of dissent has important foreign policy implications.

Western media has clearly been caught up in a “dominoes” narrative of the Arab world, employing an all-too simplistic understanding that the Egyptian revolts were a sudden explosion of pent-up frustration with the regime brought on by the incredible, and literally incendiary, example of Tunisia. No doubt a catalyst, the Tunisian uprising clearly created a buzz in Egypt. But analysts and journalists have gone on to point out even more external factors, almost obsessively; Thomas Friedman’s article in the New York Times even pointed to what he conceded were “ ‘not-so-obvious forces’ that fed the mass revolt” in Egypt, like, well, the Beijing Olympics. Of course.

The real question is this: Why must Western media continue looking for external foreign influences or even, and perhaps especially, technological ones to explain what is happening in Egypt or other parts of the Arab world? It is apparently unthinkable that a desire for freedom and democracy can spring organically from within a country. A better course of action – and one that yields more pertinent conclusions – is to explain the domestic historical strategies of resistance that made these uprisings possible.

It is true that Egyptian activists met with pro-democracy activists from Serbia and Ukraine to learn tactics of non-violent resistance. It is also true that in today’s world, with technological advances and near-limitless access to information, that Egyptians, like all of us, are influenced by what is going on in the world around them. (It is certainly worth noting, however, that the Internet penetration rate in Egypt is only 15.4%, with only one-million households having access to a broadband connection.)  But a narrative that focuses on the uprising as a sudden reactionary movement, inspired by external events and forces, is opaque: It discolours our understanding of Egypt’s rich tradition of social movement activism and political resistance.

Pundits heralding Twitter and Facebook as the new harbingers of social change and revolution all too easily overlook labour protest movements, food riots, football riots and Islamist social activism as various forms of so-called “contentious politics” and part of the political fabric that made today’s uprisings possible. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow have defined contentious politics as  “interactions in which actors make claims bearing on someone else’s interests, leading to coordinated efforts on behalf of shared interest or programs, in which governments are involved as targets, initiators of claims, or third parties.” Collective claims are thus made on the basis of historically determined repertoires of action. For example, residents of Calcutta frequently engage in labour strikes, while Britons turn to petitions to engage in claim-making; both follow from long traditions of striking and petitioning to demand rights. Similarly, in Egypt, mass protests and riots have always been the tool of choice for resistance, well before the protests captured the world’s attention via the immediacy of the 24-hour news agenda and social networks.

In Egypt, in late 2006, workers in the industrial town of Mahalla went on strike, an action that inspired other labour uprisings. This was followed by protests over the price of bread in 2008. Already, people were rising up against what they perceived to be a wholly inefficient and illegitimate government. This was also reflected in regards to sport, an arena commonly used in Egypt as a tool to stir up nationalist sentiments. In football riots following games between rivals Egypt and Algeria in 2009, victory and defeat were seen metaphorically as a reflection of political might rather than skill on the field. The nationalist sentiments endorsed by the Egyptian government quickly gave way to an expression of dissatisfaction with the regime. An Egyptian fan in Sudan noted: “How can Egypt, the Arab symbol of strength, be humiliated like this in the streets of Khartoum? And if we really are a strong country, why aren’t we doing something about it? Nobody had ever insulted the Egyptians to this degree. This issue revealed so many things, it woke up the people.” Many commentators saw this so-called “football war” as propaganda designed or orchestrated to distract Egyptians from their very real domestic problems. But under a repressive regime, where group gatherings are prohibited, large groups of football fans seized this opportunity to effectively undermine the regime. Despite its prohibition of most public gatherings, the Egyptian government tolerated and even encouraged football rioting in the streets of Cairo, before and after both matches; a performance initially condoned by the regime was transformed into a valve for dissent. This forms part of football’s long history in Egypt as a tool of resistance against colonialism (the Egyptian football club Al-Ahly, for example, was founded as a meeting place for opponents of British colonialism and its players still wear the pre-colonial flag colours). More recently, Egyptian youth movements decried rioting after a match between Egytian club Zamalek and Tunisia’s Africain club on April 2 as “counter revolutionary” violence.

Football, not Facebook, is embedded in the political vocabulary of Egyptians, despite the prominence and motivating factor behind the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook group started by Wael Ghonim, a Google employee of Egyptian descent. The tradition with football, though, goes back further than the most recent protests. Many also compare these football riots to the environmental protests in Bulgaria in the late 1980s, which were actually an outlet for anti-communist sentiment. These vocabularies of contention also came into use in the 2011 protests: Prominent blogger Alaa Abd El-Fatah noted in an interview with Al-Jazeera that, “The Ultras [a group of hardcore al-Ahly fans] have played a more important role than any other political group.” They also provided social services for demonstrators in Tahrir square, and organized themselves to regulate security and fight against government forces. Indeed, “leisure culture has powerful effects on political culture, and hence on both the demands people make on the political system and the support they bring it.” In other words, Egypt’s strong history and traditions of dissent through protests and rioting in the public and sporting arenas directly influenced the 2011 uprising.

Twitter and Facebook were instrumental in mobilizing people (though, particularly the young), in disseminating information and in updating protest locations and providing new information about ongoing state-sponsored atrocities. But these protests weren’t made possible by new technology – new technology was simply a tool that harnessed years’ worth of political resistance. And though the overall tone of the uprisings has been secular and change-driven, Islam has also played a role – one that has been almost completely ignored by the Western media, which is more familiar with painting the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists as extremists to be feared, and are generally loathe to associate Islam with positive connotations. Mosques – historically and in this particular uprising – were also a crucial venue for political organization, since many of the protesters organized together at mosques after Friday prayers. (Under Mubarak’s repressive regime, Islamism was more of a social movement that co-opted political institutions and used existing modes of discourse to articulate dissent; mosques and piety groups were some of the few places where group gatherings were permissible.) Articles like “Few Focus on Islam in One Cairo Neighborhood” heralded the arrival of a new attitude towards political change, one unfettered by religious concerns. In a polarized depiction of Egypt alternately threatened by a “hijacking of the revolution” and by the tone of political demands, there is not often room for middle ground; but the reality is that Islam remains socially and politically significant, and is likely to have an evolving role as necessitated by shifts in the political and social climate as the uprising takes on different forms with time.

As the conflict in Libya rages and we gain more distance from the galvanizing, early events of Egypt, commentators still insist on focusing on external inspiration and the “incredible” power of social media and the Internet, sensationalizing homages to Facebook and Twitter on the ground as evidence of their role. This reflects the West’s long-standing inability to ascribe historical and political agency to Arabs, and a refusal to see Arabs as meaningful and significant political actors, as capable of writing their own histories and making their own choices. At best, this view is naive and patronizing; at worst, it is dangerously neo-orientalist.

All of this is compounded by the ethically inconsistent international responses to events in the Middle East and North Africa. Since the formulation of the Atlantic Charter, one of the first iterations of human rights as we know them today, economic and security concerns have long been linked to human rights and used as a justification for intervention; war is never “war” per se, but intended to variously spread democracy, end terrorism or bring freedom to far away lands. Ironically, embattled regimes like Libya and Yemen have adopted this very language, claiming that their violent responses to uprisings or rebellions were not against civilian protesters but were morally just responses to “terrorists.” (The same type of justification is now common all over Central Asia, and has even been adopted by China.”

It is these economic and security concerns that still drive U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (and indeed, everywhere else). Western nations, especially the U.S., slowly and selectively dole out military assistance or harsh words to dictators and monarchies facing unsatisfied and striving populations, acting not in the interests of democracy and human rights but rather, unsurprisingly, in a calculated and cynically realist fashion, as evidenced by the excruciating lag in distancing themselves from key allies in the region. European nations were initially worried about alienating Libya’s tyrannical and deranged leader Muammar Gaddafi, who is crucial in controlling the flow of illegal immigrants to their shores; while Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh was seen as an important ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; to say nothing of American military and economic interests in the Gulf.

A group of study-abroad students protest in solidarity with Egyptians outside of Tahrir Square

It is only when situations are beyond repair – or move beyond dull, drawn out repression into blood-soaked massacres – that condemnation ensues. I remember well a quote by Weimar-era journalist Kurt Tucholsky that was graffitied onto the Israeli security wall surrounding Bethlehem: “A country is not only what it does, it is also what it tolerates.” Dictatorships – whether by cult of personality, monarchy or military – have been tolerated and supported by the international community for too long. It may be naïve to hope for a foreign policy approach driven by humanity and mutual respect, but in a strategically crucial region, it is time for the West to recognize the agency and power of an overwhelmingly young, globally-influenced population that has the education, the communication tools and the means to make a difference both locally and across borders – and to make good on its professed commitments to, and unending rhetoric about, human rights and democracy.

Events from Bahrain to Libya are still stuffed under the subheadings that speak of “Arab Revolutions” and the “spread of the freedom impulse” in this so-called “Arab Spring.” Tunisia and Egypt may have ousted dictators, while Libya and Yemen are perhaps on the brink of such events. But change is harder to come by elsewhere, even when it is also much needed, like in Algeria, which has been all but written off after its recent and violent civil war (and is unlikely to receive international support for fear of recidivism).

Even in Egypt, the truth is that we are far from a true revolution. As the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces moved to criminalize protests once again, few seem to be paying attention to the fact that the battle is not nearly over for Egyptians. Two words, almost too insulting to the masses that mobilized against Mubarak, appear almost too harsh to utter: Military coup. Despite the promising developments that led to the dismissal of Mubarak and members of the ossified regime he helmed, one form of authoritarian rule has simply been replaced by another. Echoes of Mubarak’s regime trickle back in, with old hands like Zahi Hawass, Minister of Antiquities, being reinstated in office. True change is not quite yet in sight – first, a democratically elected government must come into power. Only then, and only after significant economic, political, and social change – which is sure to draw on the country’s long traditions of social protest – has taken place, can we call this, or indeed other events in the region, a revolution.

Photo courtesy of Adam Baker

Could there be a Federation of Europe?

In 2008, when the global financial meltdown appeared destructively universal, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel boldly stated “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste – and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you didn’t think you could do before.” Looking at Europe’s current economic turmoil – including shocking displays of sovereign debt, troubled banks, rising unemployment, as well as social and political upheaval – Emmanuel’s mantra is likely top-of-mind for several European leaders, most senior EU policymakers, and vast swarms of consultants buzzing around Brussels.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently stated “if the euro fails, Europe fails.” Coming from the head of state of Europe’s largest piggy bank, her ominous statement confirms the EU’s resolve to plug the hole caused by the deluge of sovereign debt. However, how far is it willing to go to ensure that the monetary union survives? To make matters worse, history has shown that no common currency system has ever survived in Europe. Similar experiments were made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – for example, the Latin Monetary Union, the Scandinavian Monetary Union and the European Monetary System. All have resulted, to varying degree, in failure and collapse. Despite history’s gloomy lessons, the EU project, with a single currency as its élan vital, does not seem deterred or discouraged by the challenging state of affairs. Quite the opposite, some see it as a window of opportunity to usher in a stronger and more unified Europe.

In 2011, the ghost of Robert Schuman returns: One of the founding fathers of the EU project, he will come back to haunt Brussels-based contemporaries and successors. His dream of a “federation of Europe” may become the subject of fiery debates that could slowly break the taboos associated with fiscal federalism.

Growing the bailout fund

Last year, the world watched as two indebted eurozone countries suffered from an epic hangover after binging on all-too-appealing low-interest loans offered by the European Central Bank. Potential foreign lenders began to lose confidence, interest rates and borrowing costs rose, and national prospects were undermined. Once it became overwhelmingly real and undeniable that debt had reached unsustainable levels, both Greece and Ireland called-in a bailout to temporarily quell the crisis. This charted a path of increased economic dependence on Brussels.

This year, the Greco- and Celtic- crises may not remain isolated. An unwelcome light shines on other frayed parts of the eurozone patchwork; Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Italy, to name a few, are all under close scrutiny. So far, these countries have adopted measures to contain national debt and reassure investors and international partners that their problems are not seismic – rather, wholly manageable. In the meantime, politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels and member state capitals are seeking to quash all the babble about the end of the euro.

Eurozone finance ministers and senior officials have decided with broad accord to set up a permanent version of the European Financial Stability Facility – also known as the “bailout fund” – once it expires in 2013. The new European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will be flush with cash to actively intervene in situations where troubled nations of the eurozone need massive boosts of liquidity in order to avoid collapse. While there is a quasi-definitive consensus on the need for the ESM, ministers and officials still need to iron out details at the next summit of EU leaders in March. For now, there is a lot of talk and a fair bit of action surrounding the issue, which means the idea is being taken seriously.

It is crucial to point out that all of this negates the “no bailout” clause found in the Lisbon Treaty, Europe’s watered-down constitution, which was implemented only a year ago. The key document was finally established after ten years of tug o’ war between member states, EU officials and citizens. This included resistance by the French and Dutch governments and a fiercely debated Irish referendum. In effect, the bailout craze virtually erased the second pillar of the common currency system over night – that is, the ability of each member state to look after its own budgetary and borrowing needs. It has been yanked away and replaced with a permanent bailout mechanism, and, quite possibly, new rules regarding fiscal and economic management at the national level; in other words, coming in and dictating what a country needs to do to be fiscally responsible and meet common expectations.

Since the long-awaited Lisbon Treaty has been tinkered with so early, it’s not irrational to think even more radical changes occur.

A time for fundamental reform

The cassandras are saying that the EU will eventually face a sink-or-swim dilemma and officials will need to step boldly in order to ward off the break-up of the single currency. In response, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Ollie Rehn, predicts the 2010s will be the decade of “fundamental reform,” both at the European and the national level. In the same vein, the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, declared that “overcoming history is an imperative [for the EU].”

The current crisis could be beneficial in pushing a new phase in the evolution of the European project by pushing for further integration between countries, and particularly eurozone members. It is possible the crisis will enable EU decision-makers to gradually introduce radical transformations that achieve a revitalized Europe with closer, deeper and stronger economic ties. A move like this could include the creation of a financial union, E(U)-bond issuance and a common debt management entity.

Will Europe provide the guarantee?

Faced with lowered competitiveness at the global level, shrinking confidence in the euro and a spreading wildfire of sovereign debt, the EU could eventually be forced to accelerate the push to an economic government and a full-blown political union in order to better manage the mess. Last month, Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg and chairman of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, advocated the creation of so-called “E-bonds” issued by a common EU debt agency or a U.S.-like treasury. Mr. Juncker said cheekily: “For a systemic crisis you need a systemic response (…) so I believe that when the day comes, we will come back to the [Eurobond] proposal. I have no doubt at all that we will come back to it.” However, like all things EU, there will be much debate that could lead to a stalemate in discussions given the boldness of the proposed transformations. The process to greater integration will take time and a few devil’s advocates will inevitably emerge.

The majority of German citizens are already irked by the fact that their tax revenues go toward financing another country’s problems.

Germany, the backbone of the European economy, is already uncomfortable with the idea of an economic union and E-bonds because it fears its national economy would be most at risk. If a Europe-backed bond were introduced, German politicians and economists would decry the side effects on the country’s credit rating and future ability to borrow. In addition, Chancellor Merkel will necessarily be concerned about the impact her consent would have on her party’s domestic political standing. The majority of German citizens are already irked by the fact that their tax revenues go toward financing another country’s problems. Other European countries may also resist the idea of an E-bond due to a perceived loss of sovereignty over domestic issuance of securities and a loss of economic flexibility in general.

However, the tectonic plates of policy are beginning to shift. Earlier this month, Josef Ackermann, the influential CEO of Deutsche Bank AG, said: “Now is the time to deepen the EU, above all economic and currency union, (…) we need determined leadership for this new push toward integration.” The idea of an E-bond is also gaining steam because it would show the world that Europe is strong, united and committed to overcoming the crisis. In fact, a lot of people would like that. Even Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi said he would buy these bonds because “it’s Europe providing the guarantee.” Certainly, his sentiment would be shared by investors, both inside and outside Europe.

Most importantly, China, too, would like concrete action to contain the eurozone debt crisis. It recently bought a large amount of Portuguese and Spanish bonds and would love to see its investments secured. In the grand scheme of things, China would also support the concept of an E-bond to diversify its holdings of foreign assets, while unloading U.S. treasury securities, which are waning in both popularity and value.

U.S. dollar through the looking glass

Multiple sources forecast that the U.S. dollar will one-day lose its position as the global reserve currency. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made headlines last year when he called for an end to the dollar’s reign as the world’s primary reserve currency. Consequently, the euro would do well by solidifying its standing to ensure that countries such as China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies buy into it. In the end, this could sweeten the deal for Germany to get involved with the idea of economic integration, or some kind of centralization of fiscal oversight and control.

The biggest prize of all is a revitalized euro that could eventually challenge the U.S. dollar as a viable, alternative reserve currency. That lofty goal would add credibility to the EU, which is already the world’s biggest economy, producing the lion’s share of global GDP. According to this imagined scenario, Germany, the darling of the European economy, would have an enhanced standing not only in the economic union per se, but also in the global economy. In practical terms, it would do anything to avoid the crash of the euro because that would ensure its ultimate demise. By reverting back to the Deutschmark, Germany would suffer such a spectacular revaluation compared to the euro that it would totally derail the country’s export-driven growth, which has been the driver in its climb back from the global economic downturn.

Crystal ball revisited

Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, recently declared in a Bloomberg Television interview that the euro area would eventually disintegrate without some kind of fiscal federalism. He warned that the longer leaders postpone action, the higher the penalty. Perhaps recent calls for bold fiscal and structural measures in all member states are a precursor for big moves. It seems French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are keen on better harmonising economic policy through so-called “convergence programmes.” The Franco-German proposal could mark the shift toward fiscal unity amongst eurozone countries. “The disappearance of the euro would be so cataclysmic that we can’t even possibly entertain the idea,” Sarkozy said during a media scrum at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

EU leaders have been anticipating a crisis like this for years. The architects of the eurozone knew well that a single currency system with a fragmented fiscal policy, or the absence of a common treasury, would eventually lead to a crisis of this kind (although, perhaps not this quickly).

As Paul Krugman recently pointed out in his New York Times column, the creators initially sidelined the predictable problems they would likely encounter because they were “caught up in the project’s sweep and romance.” They may have marginalized their concerns, but they’ve certainly not forgotten them. What we are seeing now is the gradual shift toward more integration in order to close ranks and truly rescue the euro. In doing so, pushing through the final stages of amalgamation, as it once was and still is intended behind closed doors.

In 2011, beware the ghost of Robert Schuman.