authoritarianism in MENA

REMEMBER the opprobrium heaped on Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, in June for using tear gas and water-cannon against his people? Imagine the outrage if Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to fire live ammunition into demonstrators on the streets of Moscow. But over the weekend, when Egypt’s generals set about killing scores of protesters, the West responded with furrowed brows and pleas for all sides to refrain from violence. Such meekness betrays not only a lack of moral courage, but also a poor sense of where Egypt’s—and the West’s—real interests lie.

The Muslim Brothers—and other Muslims across the Middle East—will conclude from all this that the West applies one standard when secularists are under attack and another when Islamists are. Democracy, they will gather, is not a universal system of government, but a trick for bringing secularists to power. It is hard to think of a better way for the West to discourage the Brothers from re-entering Egypt’s political process.

the new government is resurrecting the hated arms of Hosni Mubarak’s security state

Tunisia’s military is widely perceived as having successfully maintained its historically non-political role in Tunisian society throughout the country’s 2011 revolution. In a region where national armies and political struggles have made for not-so-strange bedfellows, this nonpartisan mindset makes the Tunisian military something of an anomaly.

Arab and international news sources reported that it was the refusal of General Ammar, Chief of Staff of the Tunisian Armed Forces, to fire on civilians that led to the final exit of Tunisia’s former President Ben Ali. Although such reports remain unconfirmed, most local and international analysts affirm that the Tunisian Armed Forces served as a pivotal force supporting the country during its fragile transition.

the army continues to enjoy popular credibility