The Significance of ‘Dignity’ in Constructing Peace in Egypt as Exemplified by the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
Kasumi Sakurada is a 2nd year International Relations student with an interest in postcolonial studies, international institutions and the application of various theoretical frameworks to the study of contemporary political issues. This essay was awarded First Prize in the sub-honours category of the MECACS summer essay competition. Kasumi would like to thank Mr. Christopher Bennet for the advice provided in this process.
Retrospectively, the Arab Uprising seems predictable when examining the decades of devastating economic policies and political repression that the region had sustained. Beginning with the act of rebellion in Tunisia, the uprisings spread like wildfire across national borders with a momentum that shocked the world. Whilst coined the ‘biggest transformation of the Middle East since decolonization’, few scholars had predicted such a radical event based on the previously predominant theories that pointed to the resilience of authoritarian rule and neoliberal policies. With a rupture of such magnitude, a new framework to understand and predict events in the region has become pertinent. Although not the largest economy in the Middle East, Egypt and its notable history of pan-Arabism under the direction of Abdel Nasser, which has developed into Arab-nationalism today, seems to point to Egypt as a relevant country to examine this. Thus, an exploration will be conducted on the 2011 Egyptian Revolution within the framework of colonialism and neo-liberal policies, to ultimately reveal how both highlight the necessity of ‘dignity’ in the construction of sustainable peace-building in Egypt. This will be done through an examination of the call for ‘dignity’ as a direct result of colonialism, the correlational nature of the failure of neoliberal policy to the lack of ‘dignity’, and the contradiction and incompatibility of liberal and neoliberal policies with ‘dignity’.
Foremost, to understand the significance of ‘dignity’ in the 2011 Revolution and modern Egypt, its conception must be understood. To begin, the history of colonialism under the British from 1882 to 1956 was a period of “humiliation, [and the] negation of dignity” for Egyptians (Hopwood, 1983, 10). The subsequent 1956 Suez Crisis and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, which incited a call for ‘dignity’ by the Egyptian people, reveal the direct impact that the colonial period had on such a sentiment (Hopwood, 1983, 12). As quintessentially exemplified in the Suez Company and its system of concession, the dual economic structure in Egypt which whilst claiming to give back to the local economy, instead benefitted European investors. Thus, functioning as an informal empire and an “instrument of colonial domination” (Piquet, 2004, 109). The feeling of humiliation was further exacerbated by the foreign dictatorship of the Muhammad Ali dynasty under whom, merely superficial progress was made under a backdrop of economic nationalism and strong opposition to imperialist exploitation. For example, Article 4 of the 1947 Act on Limited Liability Companies stated that 40% of administrators in the Board of Directors and 90% of workers’ posts were reserved for Egyptians, yet this only represented 65% and 80% of the wage bill, respectively (Piquet, 2004, 121). Therefore, the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, in which the group of army officers–of note Abdel Nasser–toppled the longstanding dynasty, symbolized the overthrowing of imperialism and its integral nature with the growing popularity of Arab-nationalist sentiment (El Bernoussi, 2015, 369). Moreover, the 1956 Suez Crisis resulted from economic nationalism and the significance of the Suez Canal in building an independent economy (Piquet, 2004, 121). Therefore, the nationalization of the Suez Crisis was the integral first step in the nation’s materialization of ‘dignity’ which had been stripped during the colonial era. With this in mind, it can be clear how Nasser had become a symbol of Arab-nationalism and the reclaiming of dignity.
Yet, Nasser’s highly admired legacy of Arab-nationalism and its integral ‘dignity’ was eroded during the US-backed Mubarak regime through its pro-West and appeasement policies (El Bernoussi, 2015, 375). The consequence was the 2011 Egyptian uprising in which the brandished placards which detailed the people’s demands, displayed a call for a “direct and material conception of dignity”, such calls for economic opportunity (El Bernoussi, 2015, 370). Pogodda similarly outlines this by highlighting how the protestors with a large demographic mix unseen before, demanded ‘bread, freedom, and dignity’ which merged the call for political and economic change (El Bernoussi, 2015, 351). Notably, in the Arab region, hospitality is a core practice of the culture, even rooted so far as survival, especially in the deserts of North Africa. Therefore, the sharing of water, food, and shelter is a matter not simply of culture, but of ‘dignity’ which was materialized under Nasser (Hourani and Ruthven, 2002, 102). During his regime, Workers’ benefits ranged from extensive labor rights such as high wages, public pensions, sick leave, child bonuses, fixed rents, and price controls of basic commodities (Joya, 2011, 373). Meaning, that the urban population of Egypt had experienced a period in which their ‘dignity’ was reinstated after the era of colonialism (Posusney, 1993, 88). Thus, its withdrawal signified a betrayal and a fundamental removal of ‘dignity’ once again at the hands of the West (Hinnebusch, 2015, 340). This betrayal further progressed with the imprisonment of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who challenged the US-backed Mubarak government, and strengthened public opinion regarding the need to defy the West for the national dignity of postcolonial Egypt (Ibrahaim, 1996, 135). Consequently, it is clear to see the significance of this key concept in state-building and thereby, peacebuilding for the Egyptian population considering its colonial history and revolution, of which ‘dignity’, was at its core.
A structural legacy of the colonial period of Egypt, neoliberal policies, similarly led to the degradation of ‘dignity’ in Egyptian people through the deprivation of their autonomy. To understand this correlation, one can take a look at Palestinian scholar Lina Jamoul’s observation that “[t]o take away people’s choices, to make their livelihood completely dependent on your own political and economic needs, is a [matter] of dignity. … [T]he cry for dignity is the human need for recognition, the right to be human” (2004, 581). Yet, under Mubarak, began the era of neoliberalism and ‘crony capitalism’, the latter being the redefinition of existing political relations by their alliances with the business elite to dominate the business sector and function as a source of patronage (Chekir, 2014, 178). This entailed the 1991 Economic Restructuring and Adjustment Program (ERSAP) which implemented privatization of public sectors, flexible labor legislation, regression of social policies, and liberalization of trade (Joya, 2011, 370). Following a period of deep economic crisis in the 1980s and debt relief in the 1990s, the IMF restructured the Egyptian economy according to free-market principles to enable Egypt to pay off its debt. Yet, under the guise of facilitating economic growth, Mubarak produced a new form of patronage through privatization masked as the free market (Joya, 2011, 371).
As can be seen through their high participation in the 2011 Revolution and onwards, these policies led to the uprooting of ‘dignity’, especially for the youth. As a result of the neoliberal policies, a phenomenon of high youth unemployment and disproportionate disadvantagement had emerged (Singerman, 2013, 4). As a result of ‘crony capitalism’, young people–particularly young men–were economically excluded by high employment, the lack of good jobs in the formal sector, and politically excluded through authoritarian state repression (Singerman, 2013, 9). Specifically, in the case of Egypt, the concept of “waithood” is relevant as through their prolonged adolescence with the economic impossibility of marriage, they socially exclude these men as well. Furthermore, it must be noted that 40% of the population in Egypt is between the ages of ten and twenty-nine (Population Council and The Egyptian Cabinet, 2010, 6). Therefore, considering their demographic significance, the impact neoliberal policies had on young people’s ‘dignity’ and their consequent impact on the Revolution can be explained.
Not only economically and socially excluded, but a majority of young men were experiencing the stigma and political exclusion that came as a result of growing up in poor informal housing areas, ‘ashwa’iyaat’ (Singerman, 2013, 8). The impact of inhabiting these areas which endured the government’s indifference to oversubscribed schools and police abuse is explored in the framework introduced by Singermann, which can be described as neoliberalism from the sky (2009, 215). This framework details how a birds’ eye view of Greater Cairo reveals an increasing physical separation in the city’s poor informal housing and gated residential areas (Singerman, 2013, 6). Through such a lens, the perceptibility of the disparity in government investment for housing by those in ‘ashwa’iyaat’ and their political exclusion can be better understood (Singerman, 2013, 8). As observed through policies such as Law 96, neoliberal policies created a new set of power relations in which the rural peasantry lost the autonomy to reproduce due to their land being controlled by large landlords (El-Ghonemy, 2003, 5; Bush, 2000, 236). Consequently, turning peasants with secure tenure rights into landless sharecroppers or migrant workers who live in ‘ashwa’iyaat’ (Joya, 2011, 374). In addition, the skyrocketed price of basic commodities, and the state’s increase in transportation price, electricity, and communication fees contributed to the erosion of Jamouls’s conception of ‘dignity’ in making the Egyptian people’s “livelihood completely dependent on [their] own political and economic needs” (2004, 581).
In response to these observations, however, Deboulet optimistically argues that grassroots planning and working-class communities have had success in making social exclusion discernible and have created the possibility for the city to transform into governable and affordable (2009, 289). Moreover, through a strengthening of the notion, the ‘right to the city’–the idea of a right of no exclusion of urban society from qualities and benefits of urban life–as an essential human right, and the “renegotiation of urban modernism and developmentalism in law and space and between international and local norms”, she argues it can and has begun the process of recognizing the ‘dignity’ of the multitude and working-class communities useful contribution to the city’s shape, structure, and dynamics (Deboulet, 2009, 288). By understanding and promoting the Egyptian people’s autonomy through local state-building, the regeneration of their ‘dignity’ as conceptualized by Jamoul seems achievable.
This then points to the incompatibility of liberal and neoliberal policies with the call for ‘dignity’ in the Arab Uprising. As theorized most clearly by Richmond in his examination of the liberal conception of peace, liberal peace works top-down and with an assumption of states and institutions as the predominant actor, or what he terms peace-as-governance (2006, 298-299). Yet, in conflict environments, intervention–which came in the form of state and institutional conditionality for Egypt– results in a diversion of funds from public services to regime security and patronage, destroying both institutional and local capacities (Fukuyama, 2017, 53). Richmond argues this is partly a result of the institution’s top-down approach and resistance by those acting from a bottom-up approach (2006, 298). What also must be noted, however, is the inherent incongruence of neoliberal and liberal policies with revolutionary egalitarian concepts, ontologically and epistemologically. Whilst neoliberal and liberal policies are based on a positivist ontology and epistemology in which actors as individualistic and autonomous, the revolutionaries are based on and advocate for a social ontology and epistemology in which power relations are integral (Tickner, 2005, 6). Moreover, especially in consideration of the international institutions’ top-down approach in the context of an anarchical global system, it remains a fair criticism that its peacebuilding approach and methods remain dominated by hegemonic, Western states (Toth, 2021, 300). Considering this, the incompatibility of liberal peacebuilding and revolutionary agency–its stride for ‘dignity’–also become convincing, especially when considering the neoliberal policies that followed a colonial context.
As a result of such theoretical incompatibilities, the lack of human security in the policies and its subsequent implications on the 2011 Revolution become clear. Whilst it would be presumed that under neoliberal reform, accountability, human rights protection, and rule of law is of priority, such an agenda was neglected in state-building initiatives conducted by Arab with the assistance of the G7. Instead, a focus was placed on effectiveness in terms of regime security rather than human security, or the protection of people’s ‘dignity’ (Pogodda, 2020, 351). Hence, with a path paved for the restoration of elements from the old regime, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ‘upgraded authoritarianism’ delivered stability through pacification, once again removing political and economic autonomy. For revolutionaries, financial support for his dictatorship by the IMF, US, and EU implicated the West, its supporters, and their contradictions, a continuation of the disregard for their ‘dignity’ (Pogodda, 2020, 352). This disconnect is also observed by Toth who writes of the liberal intelligentsia of Egypt that chose to eschew religion thereby, abandoning the culture of their country (2021, 300). However, their belief in liberal peace also allowed the justification of the slaughter of Islamist and radical protestors in 2013 in fear of Islamist domination and accepted such measures as ‘necessary’ then concurring with the termination of the democratization process (Fahmy and Faruqi, 2017, 57). Considering the consequences of inherent contradictions between liberal claims and their implementation on ‘dignity’ both theoretically and in practice, it is reasonable to claim the necessity for a different framework of peace.
This thus points to the need for peace building with a social ontological foundation in Egypt. Notably, Khodary argues for a method of peace building that incorporates both states and institutions as the predominant actor as well as local initiatives. She outlines this as “participatory and inclusive state-building [that] sets the foundation for peace and can be viewed as a complement to peacebuilding activities in local communities driven by civil society groups” (Khodary, 2000, 500). Yet, inherent in the system of liberal peace is the paradoxical systematic exclusion of the revolutionary movements–that had paved the way for democratization–from formal decision-making due to their lack of arsenal in terms of traditional state formation strategies (Pogodda, 2020, 355). Therefore, considering equal political participation as integral to autonomy, Khodary’s argument seems not to consider the ontological and systemic implications of bringing together a democratic system and liberal conception of peace with grass-root initiatives. This however, consequently highlights the necessity for a bottom-up, local state-building approach as a means of achieving peacebuilding and ‘dignity’–the two of which come hand in hand–due to their shared ontological and epistemological basis of the method and goal.
Ultimately, after examining the significance of ‘dignity’ in Egypt through the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, it becomes clear the effect the neglect and erosion of this “the right to be human” has had on the nation’s population throughout time (Jamoul, 2004, 581). Whilst this points policymakers in a certain direction, it must be noted that its precise framework of application in state and peacebuilding remains an issue that requires further exploration. The incompatibility of neoliberal and liberal policies in the region is clear and yet, the hegemonic position that such theories hold internationally and even within Egypt cannot be denied. Thus, what remains is the understanding that in all aspects of existence–social, political, economic, religious–‘dignity’ has an established hold, and is integral to the country and region’s identity and history; it cannot be ignored.
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