The Arab Spring: Sout Al Horeya صوت الحرية

[Note: April 11, 2011: This will likely be a work in progress: you might want to bookmark and return.]

At the end of "The Battle of Algiers," the 1966 Italian film -- produced under the auspices of the National Liberation Front (FLN) that had fought against the French in Algeria for years until finally crushed by military occupation and torture -- we see the last four FLN fighters blown up in a building the French special forces have surrounded. Suddenly, it is two years later, and an amazed French correspondent in Algiers calls home to say that demonstrations have unexpectedly broken out all over the country, thousands of homemade flags waving and voices chanting about freedom ("Horeya").

The film had a surge of popularity after the US invasion of Iraq, as it was apparently used in briefings about how to control an urban rebellion in an Arab country. I remember the surprise with which I  exclaimed to friends, "Surely the Americans watched the film to the end. The French won every battle, then lost the war." Suddenly it's 45 years later, and again "those unintelligible and frightening rhythmic cries" are echoing from the Arab quarter, and this time it's the rulers who seized and held power across North Africa and the Middle East for 40 years who stand amazed.

What's going on? where did these people come from? How did they get so well-organized? How do they (mostly) maintain nonviolence in the face of overwhelming police and military presence? I think we have just seen the irruption, from an area known to be among the worst in the world in its provision of education to its young people, most corrupt and inefficient, least open to liberal social and economic policiey, of a generation of self-educated young people, who are completely at ease in the Net and who know how to bring down governments. They've been communicating with each other for years, filling the social media of the Internet with Tweets and Facebook wall entries tapped out in the transliterated characters of instant messages and voiced in thousands of MP3s and YouTube videos by local rappers.

It's the hip-hop aspect of all this to which I hope to return on my own upcoming visit to Morocco – but that will await theanother blog entry. For now, and in response to many questions from friends in many walks of life, some tips on how first to see and then to begin to understand what's at issue on the streets of Tunis, and Cairo, and Amman, and Benghazi, and … Rabat.

We haven't heard such cries of liberation from this neighborhood recently. But then of course we haven't been listening. The stories we hear about Egypt are tourist accounts of its exotic and seductive history and culture, along with a sense that, if somewhat remiss on human rights as governed by Sadat and Mubarek, Egypt is nonetheless an essential part of the "peace process" (cf. "peace") and a bulwark against militant Islam. From the Atlantic to beyond the Gulf, where America's allies have stifled dissent, brutalized regime opponents, diverted hundreds of billions of dollars from the economy, given up on educating the young, and assured the Western world that after them there is only holy terror, new voices are heard.

By not listening I also mean that we haven't looked closely at the faces, we haven't seen the lips move and had a feeling for what's being said. Egypt, like most of the southern and eastern quarter of the planet, is for us at the top of the world food chain merely ambience and a globalized market for our hamburgers and Android phones: the setting for our own fantasies and fears (cf. Edward Said).

Here's what they said as they marched around Tahrir square. Here's what they said after they had beaten off and "arrested" the goons who attacked them with clubs, knives, whips and guns. Here's what they said, along with "God is great!" and, "Leave! Leave!"

asha' ab youreed esqaat ar ra' is
asha' ab youreed esqaat ar ra' is
asha' ab youreed esqaat ar ra' is
asha' ab youreed esqaat al nezam

"The people want the leader gone
The people want the leader gone
The people want the leader gone
The people want the regime gone." 

and here's how it sounded on the square, in the voice of a young girl with a microphone amidst the masses at Liberation Square. Suddenly, 12 days after the demonstrations began, a new face appears: Wael Ghonim, Marketing Director for Google in the Middle East, who has been active in social media organizing for several years, who returns to Egypt from his home and job in Dubai, who is held by security forces for 12 days, and who pours his heart out about what has just happened on the Square.

The New York Times put its heavy hitters – Roger Cohen, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof– into Tahrir square and they did a marvelous job of reporting both awe at what was happening and shock at how wrong US media have been of what was possible in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. The NYT's video archive on the demonstrations still underway is a useful resource. The essential source, and by far the most popular, was Al Jazeera. "Biased"? Of course (cf. Fox, CNN, New York Times). Al Jazeera liked what was happening in Tunisia and Egypt. But engaging, articulate, well produced – and with a wide range of opinion presented, with a depth of on-street and editorial coverage unmatched by the Western media  It's largely unwatchable on cable in the US, unless you happen to be in Vermont or Ohio, but the streaming English coverage is available to anyone with Web access). Russia Today (speaking of POV) weighed in with commentary from American rapper. M-1. 

For me, Tahrir Square finally came home in the impassioned statements of the young techies who engineered the social media, as seen in Cairo's Facebook Flat and the splendidly-produced compilation of the slogans of liberation lip-synched to the people calling out to the world in the "Voice of Freedom."

Pause, look at the faces, hear the sweetness of the Egyptian dialect …

Our voices reached those who could not hear them
In every street in my country the sound of freedom is calling
Our weapon is our dreams 

Where have we heard these voices before? How will we as 21st century Americans respond to these echoes of our revolution, these voices blowing in the wind?

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Suggested Links

• Al Jazeera: Mark LeVine: The shifting zeitgeist of the 'Arab Spring'
• Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera: We saw the Arab revolutions coming. (retrieved March 1, 2011)
• Arab Human Development Report. United Nations, 2002. (the bleak socioeconomic picture)
• MENA Development Report: The Road Not Traveled -- Education Reform in the Middle East and North Africa. World Bank, 2008. Execuative summary, 2007. (the state of education for 80 million young Arabs
• From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. Gene Sharp, 4th edition, 2010. (a how-to book for nonviolent revolution, widely read in the MENA)
• My Makhzen and Me: a superb documentary on the Arab Spring in its Moroccan manifestations, by Nadir Bouhmouch; in English, Spanish and Arabic, with subtitles. English link: www.mymakhzenandme.com/english.html

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On the day of this draft blog entry, I was interviewed again by my friend David Van Nuys for his Shrink Rap Radio podcast site. We discussed political demonstrations across North Africa and the roles youthful political organizing and popular media have played. The interview is linked here.