Reporting on the Middle East from the streets

Irrespective of how one feels about the direction taken by various Arab revolutions in the last three years, a few facts remain incontestable: Arab revolts began in the streets of poor, despairing Arab cities, and Arabs had every right to rebel, considering the dismal state of affairs in which they live.

Few disagree with these two notions. The quarrel, however, concerns, in part, the cost-benefit analysis of some of these revolutions, Syria being the prime example.

Is it worth destroying a country several times over and victimising millions to achieve an uncertain democratic future?

The cost for Egypt was high as well, although not as high as  in Syria.

The conundrum that Egyptians have been forced to contend with is that of “stability” — based on the same old paradigm of powerful elites and a majority fighting for crumbs to survive — vs. “instability” in a relatively democratic system.

While appreciating the uniqueness of every Arab experience, one can hardly deny the parallels that began to emerge over the course of months and years.

Part of the similarity between the various Arab experiences is inherent in the common historical, religious, cultural and linguistic rapports that continue to unite millions of Arabs, even if at an emotional level.

The other part is concerned with the comparable strategies applied by Arab governments to control their peoples — the psychological manipulation, the fear mongering, the intense degrees of violence and oppression, the readiness to go to any length to ensure total control, and so on.

The last three years offered more such examples than the earlier decades.

The Arab Spring has morphed into a model of state violence unequalled in modern Arab history.

While for journalists and reporters the story is perplexing and too involved to explain with any degree of intellectual integrity, future historians are likely to have less difficulty deciphering the seemingly befuddling events.

Some of us wrote with a measure of clarity from the very early days of the revolutions, warning about the possibility of mixing up the complex narratives from Tunisia and Morocco to Yemen and Bahrain.

I contended that if the Arab Spring were to be a triumph of any kind, it should have brought back to the Middle East political equation the “people” factor, which has been continually dominated by two competing, and at times harmonious, parties: the local, ruling elites and regional and international foreign powers.

True, the “people” were finally back as an integral part of that equation, but that alone is just not enough to guarantee that the wheel of history would start turning into the desired direction at a preferred speed.

It simply meant that the future nature of conflicts in the Middle East and North African region were more multifarious than ever.

From a historical point of view, the current conflict in the Middle East — the devastating war in Syria, the utter chaos and recurring coups in Libya, the push and pull involving the military in Egypt and the bedlam in Yemen, for example  — are not in the least unanticipated outcomes of an unprecedented historical conversion in a region associated with hopeless stagnation.

But historians have the leverage of time. They can sit in their recluse offices and reflect on substantial phenomena, compare and contrast as they please and only regard their conclusions as serious when time confirms them.

Reporters on the ground and media commentators hardly have such leverage. 

They are forced to react instantaneously to developing events, and quickly draw conclusions.

Considering the lack of depth and understanding of the Middle East that many Western reporters had to begin with — their interests in the region were mostly augmented and surrounded by US-Western intervention in Iraq and elsewhere — reporting on the Arab Spring was greatly lacking and at times outright embarrassing.

True, many reporters agreed that it all began when a despairing Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, lit himself on December 17, 2010.

That could have been the start of an intelligent discussion if it were coupled with an authentic understanding of Arab culture, language, history and political dynamics unique to every society.

Unfortunately, there was little of that.

When then-Tunisian president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali decided to step down, on January 14, 2011, soon to be followed by Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the reporting moved from the street back to the same tired circle of self-serving political elites, Western-funded NGOs, English-speaking social media buffs and their likes.

What could have been an equal revolution in the media’s understanding of the Middle East became a failed attempt at understanding what Arab people in the street truly aspired to achieve.

If regular Arabs do not speak English or tweet all day long because they are busy surviving and all, they will not receive funds from some EU-affiliated financier to sustain their NGO. 

Then they are forgotten and of no consequence to the story.

But the problem that regular Arabs stand at the heart of the story. Failure to respond to their pleas, understand their language, values or aspirations is not their problem, but the media’s.

It might have been too inconvenient for some to chase common Arabs’ stories, as doing so could be dangerous because they are not reachable by phone or because their social-media presence is dismal.

It might be out of sheer laziness or complete ignorance of what matters and what does not. It might also be that their story does not fit nicely into the fictitious discourse that is knitted on behalf of some media organisations.

One might be Shiite or Sunni, another might be Christian or anti-intervention, and that can be inconvenient to report.

Now that sham democratic elections are bringing dictators back to power, and that sanctioned intellectual elites in Arab countries have proved to be no more than lackeys to existing regimes, it is time to go back to the streets, this time with true understanding of language, culture and people.

Unlike Bouazizi, the Arabs of the Middle East should not have to set themselves ablaze to become worthy of a news report.

Their constant struggle and resistance is a story that must be told. In fact, it is the only story that should have mattered in the first place.  

The writer, a PhD scholar in people’s history at the University of Exeter, is managing editor of Middle East Eye. He is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London). He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.