Violence, the Norm of 'Security' States

CAIRO -- The Egyptian parliament's decision last week to extend emergency rule for another two years -- including sweeping emergency powers to detain citizens indefinitely -- reflects an exaggerated reliance on heavy-handed police methods to govern and keep the peace. Visiting Cairo this week, I became more convinced that this is a counter-productive approach, and one that Arab governments should quickly reconsider before they do irreparable damage to their societies.

One-party ruling elites that have been in power for three to four decades find it easier to clamp down quickly, or even preemptively, on troublemakers and opposition forces, than to seek stability through orderly politics, equitable economic growth, and the rule of law. Beyond the few wealthy oil-producing welfare states, the double stresses of steady prices increases and persistent political autocracy are causing grave damage to the Arab national fabric. They lead to a slow fraying at the edges of social orders, economic forces and political systems that had held steady in most Arab states since the 1920s.

The political institutions that should provide a mechanism for resolving disputes, solving problems, and agreeing on consensus policies are slowly degrading in most Arab countries. Parliaments, political parties, elections and most civil society and non-governmental organizations have all suffered from steadily eroding credibility and declining impact.

This is partly due to the phenomenon that is so visible here in Egypt, where the state uses heavy-handed security measures to crush any potential opposition, including jailing thousands of opponents. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, claims that 50,000 of its members have been repeatedly arrested, tried, jailed and released since the start of the emergency laws era in 1981.

The continued use of emergency laws for 27 years non-stop suggests that the basic institutions of Arab governance are decaying. This is also reflected in other recent developments in Egypt: violence between police and demonstrators during labor strikes and food price protests in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla, and clashes between Muslim and Christian citizens in the Minya region, in Upper Egypt.

Egypt is not an isolated case. Many top-heavy, security-focused Arab governance systems end up breeding increasing frustration at the community and household levels, instead of fostering order and stability.

Ordinary Arab citizens who endure the prolonged, self-inflicted decay of their governance institutions have no real options. Even those who turned to Islamist movements have seen some of those groups lose credibility, when they proved unable to break through the hardened firewall of political control that the ruling elite erected around them in many countries. In the past year Islamist parties that had previously done well in elections fell back in countries like Jordan and Morocco.

This is a troubling sign, because it reflects one of two things that are equally dangerous: Either the state is fixing the elections and gerrymandering the electoral districts to strangle the Islamists, or masses of ordinary citizens have lost confidence in the Islamists' move into electoral politics. When security clampdowns, emergency laws, fraudulent elections, and heavy-handed and preemptive arrests are normal operating procedures for Arab political systems, most citizens slowly drift away from civic and political engagement. They seek refuge in tribal, family, communal or religious identities. Some embrace the corruption of the prevailing system. A few emigrate legally or illegally. An even smaller number join terrorist groups.

The bulk of the citizenry, with no real options, become passive, indolent, and angry, in some cases feeling dehumanized that their own societies treat them with the same disdain that they had experienced previously from foreign colonial occupiers.

The most dangerous consequence of states and governments turning to security-based governance and control -- when a rule of law system would do much better -- is that this makes violence first routine, and then the norm. This is compounded by the fact that all native and invader governments in this region -- Arabs, Israeli, Turkish, Iranian, American and British -- now routinely use violence against their own people or their foes.

The lesson for all, however, should be that the gun does not produce security, stability or docility. It only turns once law-abiding citizens into numbed and angry people who feel they have little stake in a system that does not treat them like human beings. Agitated, demeaned, pauperized and fearful for their children's future, they start to resist and defy their own power elite. Ultimately, some strike back, initially with passive resistance, strikes, and peaceful protests; when those outlets are blocked, they use the violence that they see being used against them by their governments and their governments' foreign backers.

The Arab world is destroying itself from within by relying more and more on emergency laws, when it needs more rule of law and independent judiciaries.