Understanding the Political Transition As Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, remarked in opening the panel’s discussion, “If you think you can understand the political transition, it means you don’t understand the political transition.” Fawaz Gerges, professor of International Relations at the LSE, traced in broad strokes the current, turbulent moment in the Arab world, and its context: a “fierce struggle about the identity of the state”, with no consensus on what form it should take; a civil war between Islamists and nationalists which has been going on in one form or another since the 1950s, and which has led other groups including human rights advocates to “jump on the bandwagon of the military” against the Islamists; and a regional war by proxy – with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE ranged against Qatar and Turkey – in which outside powers intervene and complicate local struggles. Two of the most influential states, Saudi Arabia and Iran, though they oppose each other as Sunni and Shia powers, are crucially, in Gerges’ words, “both counter-revolutionary forces”. And at the heart of all this is what Gerges calls an “organic crisis”: one of the world’s wealthiest regions beset with failed institutions, some 43% of the population on average living in poverty, massive youth 10 Speakers: Fawaz Gerges - Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, Bichara Khader - Founder of Study and Research Center on the Contemporary Arab World, unemployment (30-45%), the world’s worst food insecurity and greatest income inequality. In a theme that echoed throughout the conference, Gerges and Hugues Mingarelli, the European External Action Service’s first Managing Director for the Middle East, noted the similarities between Europe and the Arab world and the multiple ties that bind them, both emphasising the danger of assuming an “Arab exception”. There is nothing historically or geographically unique in the upheaval across the region; as Mingarelli put it, it would be “nonsense” to suggest that “Islam is not compatible with democracy”, or pluralism – Europe’s own similar transition took centuries and its results are still problematic. Where the panel disagreed was over what Europe’s role has been and should be. Mingarelli emphasised how much is already being done and the circumstantial problems preventing further cooperation, including the reluctance of some Arab countries to engage economically and the difficulty of reaching a European consensus on Israel. Gerges and others, though, as well as a majority of the audience, insisted that Europe can and must do far more, and for a very long time to come. Hugues Mingarelli - Managing Director MENA, European External Action Service, European Commission Klaas de Vries - Senator, Dutch Labor Party Moderator: Lyse Doucet - Chief International Correspondent BBC
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