Ten years on from the Arab Spring uprisings, we look at whether revolutions constitute an effective way of improving a country’s governance, with Dr Alia Brahimi, an expert in Middle Eastern politics.

In this podcast we look at the precursors and aftermath of the Arab Spring, examining several of the affected countries - then and now - to see whether their lots have been improved. We also examine revolutions in general and consider how you might determine their success or failure, and over what period of time it is appropriate to judge their outcomes. Finally, we analyse different types of revolution and try to understand how they might be predicted.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• Jihad and Just War in the War on Terror
• ‘Life has got worse since the Arab Spring’
• Alias Advisory
• Quality of Government data

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think and tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights and also with our special guest this week, Alia Brahimi, and this week we're discussing the lasting effects of the Arab Spring. So Nick, can you start us off, perhaps introduce us a little bit, tell us about Alia, who we've got with us here?

So I think this year will be the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring and I think some of the things we probably want to talk about is whether the lasting effect has been positive or negative in different countries and what has succeeded and what has failed and what that might teach us more generally about revolutions and whether they work and if so how. And so who better really than Alia Brahimi and I've known Alia for several years now and she's the founder of Alias Advisory but also primarily an academic who has worked at both Oxford University and the LSE and is, you know, obviously published a lot of things in the popular press as well and who has an unparalleled knowledge of the Middle East both firsthand from, you know, living there and knowing lots of people there but also from stuff like reading books about it and that kind of thing. So yeah, so that's why I've asked her to join us on the podcast to talk about the Arab Spring.

Great. Alia, can you fill that lovely introduction, can you fill that out a little bit for us, tell us a bit more about your background, maybe your sort of areas of research and yeah, whatever you think makes sense.

Sure, yeah, as Nick says I'm originally an academic, I probably still am and I started my dubious career at the luminous University of Oxford, I was very lucky and in those days I was very much interested in the way in which war and violence is justified morally and philosophically and theologically. So I wrote a book on how the Bush administration had reinvented aspects of the western just war tradition to legitimize the war in Iraq and other controversial elements of the war on terror and also in the same book I talked about how Al Qaeda had sort of reimagined important aspects of the Islamic ethic of war and as Nick knows I'm still very interested in argumentation and narratives surrounding terrorism and conflict and I'm actually hoping to soon begin a research project that looks at the continuities between right-wing and jihadist terrorism. But that early focus on Al Qaeda, its ideology and strategy led me quickly into wider commentary on security and political issues in the MENA region, particularly when I was at LSE, which was during the Arab Spring and then after that I did a fair amount of advisory work

most recently in Libya. So look, when we have a guest like this I think, unusually because I tend to ask the questions, but when we have a guest like this I think it's sort of better coming from yourselves Nick and Chris, so I mean I'm going to knock it back to yourself Nick or Chris to lead us in with any questions. Well yeah I guess the main one is,

the Arab Spring, has it disappeared? Are its effects still being felt and if so in what ways you know in different countries? A very broad question I know, you might want to drill into

So I think the because you mentioned there were five main countries where it happened is I guess I'm guessing the other one is Egypt? Yeah so it was so what's the story there?

I mean Egypt's a good example where you know it was hopeful at first but since then so full-blown civil war didn't break out in Egypt but Egypt's an example of where places which averted war where there's been this massive black backslide in terms of human rights where the situation is probably worse than it was previously yeah so in Egypt now you're looking at 60,000 political prisoners whereas under Mubarak it's probably one or two thousand so you know so

even so is that because the new kind of regime is essentially a kind of almost what's the counter

revolution and they're kind of even more extreme? It was the counter revolution so in Egypt and Tunisia what was critical so you know there are a number of explanatory variables as to why each revolution took the path it took and one of them was the role of the military and in Egypt and Tunisia the military's decision not to open fire on protesters was game-changing it completely altered the equation and Mubarak and Ben Ali left power but while in Tunisia the military then retreated in Egypt it stayed on to sort of manage the transition so it allowed a brief experiment with democracy which produced inevitably the most organized opposition movement would come into power first which was the Muslim Brotherhood so they quashed that fairly quickly very violently and now the military rules openly in that Egypt is now led by General Sisi

Chris I want to hear from you yeah well I'm quite interested in because obviously it was 10 years ago which seems like time enough to reflect but sort of historically just in terms of you know the pattern of revolutions you know you look at the French Revolution and it was you know it was 10 years of chaos and then you know slowly emerging from that you look at the American Revolutionary War and you know you had kind of eight years of war and then it was it was decades before you know sort of standard of living returned to pre-revolutionary levels well they still haven't

accepted that think they're worse off and they should return to the to the motherland

other factors which happen to prevail well not just a revolution but also a peaceful transition right so right yeah I mean that's right sorry yes yeah yeah I think we can talk about you know certainly

because it just occurred to me I mean one of the most resilient types of autocracy is a monarchy um they've got one of the lowest annual rates of of failure um it's 0.03 percent of um monarchies fail in any given year um and of course there were that really the the certainly the um Arabian Peninsula is a hotbed of monarchies it's like the last holdout of monarchies so um is that a factor is it just that actually you've got a lot of monarchies absolute monarchies well they tend

intervention in each Arab Spring country. Chris? Yeah well I'm sort of quite interested in this notion of um the extent to which something is is round the corner I mean if you look at sort of czarist Russia you know there were many attempts to sort of overthrow or undermine czarist Russia before it was it was effective you know um right there was actually a revolution but um what what I'm kind of what I'm interested in is is the extent to which um when you get those revolutions you know they're often led like the successful ones are often led by the most fervent right and in in the region you're talking about I mean if you look at um uh you know the Iranian revolution you know what happened afterwards was those with the clearest vision kind of uh you know imposed the system afterwards and those who resisted uh you know or had a different vision the only way to suppress that when you have uh effectively um you know forced a power transition as opposed to having a democratic process the only way to to sort of um you have no legitimacy or political legitimacy at that point and so you know the only way you can defend things is is autocratically and by by locking things down and I so I'm wondering a you know are we are we likely to see a cycle of of attempts you know as as you have done you you have done in other kind of autocratic um uh you know long-standing um regimes and are they kind of destined to be replaced by something something else that is fervent and and then has to be you know what's what's the root out of this cycle of of autocracy replacing autocracy uh you know I think it's a question

then and by then does it matter a lot of questions sorry no it's a great question and it is the question because you're talking about a prevailing political economy a model that is defunct right and it has the makings of a major crisis because it's not just the oil rich monarchies that rely on this dynamic you know many countries are propped up by remittances and second order effects from these hydrocarbons economies and I think the most damning indictment in this regard is that for decades now many of these monarchies regimes and governments have been talking about diversification about transitioning to a knowledge-based economy about moving away from oil and gas rents and yet almost nothing has been done so it shows that these structures are not compatible with the reforms that they need to survive so that question has been asked and it's answered and I'm not sure that they're going to pull anything out of the bag at this late stage because these systems lack the imagination sort of to rise to the moment I feel so that that very much I think leads to the to be continued. Right so I think I mean I think I think

the answer then I mean is is to the question of you know what what does the Arab Spring mean 10 years on is you look you're asking looking at where we are now and trying to say well how much progress have we made is the wrong way to answer it that actually you know what the Arab Spring was was a symptom of some much more deep-seated structural problem that has not been fixed and that's the that's the issue and that at some point we will face something whether or not it's going to be good or bad we don't know but on the evidence of most revolutions it'll probably be bad but you know it's going to happen and there's the you know it doesn't look like there's anything we can do to make that sort of to fix it in the short term we just have to wait is that true or is that an overly cynical politically realist sort of view well I think that the people with the most

agency in terms to stave off this kind of crisis and seismic event that you're talking about which is the governments themselves are doing very little so you know unless that changes and we incentivize something or but you know at the same time you know as they become more repressive they're they're more and more running counter to the zeitgeist and now that Biden's in power and that sort of thing so it's hard to know you know for them what would be the wise way to go and if they're unwilling which they are to do any of the hard work you know the outcome sort of seems inevitable and that's the feeling across the region is that something has to give and it will give and you know you look at the the placards in Tahrir Square where people are talking about how they're already dead I think that's that's the key I'm not afraid to die because I'm already dead or leave so that we can live it's a life and death thing so if that's another generation or another two generations you know I think that that's a there's a cost that many will be willing to bear and that will manifest itself in the event of another major crisis whether it's another global food crisis the outcome of the pandemic by the way or even you know a weather based event as a result of climate change or something but there are plenty of catalysts that you can imagine and it does just need that spark it is a tinterbox at the moment even though things feel relatively stable geopolitically when you're there you know it does feel like um that something something has to give and and and give soon yeah yeah yeah so well we'll catch

up in 10 years and uh let's see what I think that is the scope and the magnitude that we're talking

about yes yeah I feel like that has rounded it off is there anything extra we want to I mean I don't worry I've got a question I want to ask um but Nick Chris is there is there anything more you want to ask there bearing in mind this needs to be a kind of a rounding it all off if I think I

think yeah I think the only thing that um that occurs to me is that the the backdrop of what comes next should look quite optimistic in terms of you know the number of countries that are democratic at the moment it's it's you know in general terms is going up it's an upwards trend so you know let's let's hope that's the direction things going yeah I think that you know it recall

always calls to mind that line from C.S. Eliot that we're undefeated because we've gone on trying and I think that's that's the key and that's what we've seen in the last couple of years with as I say these brave and beautiful uh young people out in the streets uh they will go on trying

uh Nick anything you'd like to add well I think that's a good uh rounding off so I think phrase you should ask the question the question um yeah I can't recall Ali if you if you listen to our

podcast or not I'm afraid I tipped her off you know oh but I you know on the point of listening I do and and habitually but when I commute so for the lot you know for almost a year I haven't really which I felt a huge loss but at the same time I feel like at the same time I feel like I've climbed into my phone because I listen to this podcast so it's really quite exciting

I like that that's a nice advert right that's good um so Ali when we have a special guest like yourself what we always what I always like to do is I ask so here's the question um if you weren't an academic uh stroke expert in the Middle East right what would you be what would what's your other life what's the other Alia out there what would you be doing if you weren't doing this

well I'd like to be a police officer probably but I think that's from you know it's an adjacent field maybe it's an outgrowth of what I do already so I'll be more brave and say a builder and why a builder um well I just love how things uh sort of fit together I like to work with my hands that sort of thing I just get exhilarated on on a building site with the troubleshooting and the constant uh problem solving if I was a bit fancier I might say an engineer like my father but um you

know builders good enough for me well hold on what would you build what kind of structures

would you go in for probably houses and build and renovate houses and well perhaps perhaps perhaps

you could be you know the first uh the first democratically elected prime minister of of uh you know Saudi Arabia in years to come and then you could build a new country well nice little yeah that's pretty terrible wasn't it that was pretty bad

highly contrived yeah yeah it's contrived there you go that's the word I'm highly contrived but

not not sort of irrelevant because uh you know in lieu of reforming the economy and tackling these urgent uh deep structural problems and Mohammed bin Salman is building a whole new city called Neom and it's it's a space age city with robots and this automatic cars and this that

wait sorry where's this where is this in Saudi Arabia yeah whereabouts though which well it's

on the coastline so when you go as a tourist which I don't know if you've noticed the campaigns on on your sky uh box the television campaigns but when you go and visit um beautiful Saudi Arabia uh you know that should be that should be on your bucket list because it will be a city like no meanwhile Saudis are getting poorer and poorer and youth unemployment stands at over 40 percent

it sounds like a dystopian nightmare so don't write a bad trip advisor

or they might come and get you yeah and actually just you know this is may or may not be for the podcast but just out of interest I'm curious Ali where originally what's your background are you from are you Saudi Arabia where are you from originally I'm not uh that was that was uh

orientalist stereotype the thing is I know you're but you're Algerian but they've got a prime minister

haven't they so what's the point of that I can't say that that's true that's true so I'm half American and half Algerian I was born in Wichita Kansas and moved to the region uh moved to the region as a baby and lived in Bahrain in Algeria where my father's from in uh Cyprus as well for a bit uh and I spent a lot of time in Lebanon yeah but you wait till you hear the exciting fact I

Alia you're you're a woman of many layers it seems so so yeah that's true um yeah that's

one way of putting it um I'm surprised to hear you say that you wanted to be a builder as well

so much so uh my husband asked me and as I said you know if I if I was being fancy I'd probably be you know my father was an aerospace engineer actually right yeah and anyway wow okay very

interesting okay I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap things up I've got a little spiel to give here yeah so we'll stop there um if you've got any thoughts or suggestions for topics um you can email us at podcast at alephinsights.com we'd love to hear from you uh also if you've enjoyed the podcast um Nick what should listeners do they should uh lightly tickle the like button and follow us on your chosen streaming service so it just remains for me to say thank you uh so much for joining us on the Cognitive Engineering Podcast I'm Fraser McGruer we've been here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights but of course a special thank you to our special guest Ali Ibrahimi thank you very much indeed for joining us that was wonderful thank you um until next time goodbye