MENA discussion day at SOAS: indignation was beyond poverty challenges!

Yesterday March 7, 2011 was marked by two big Middle East discussion events at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London . The lunch time discussion was a panel of SOAS researchers and faculty featuring a contribution by a participant from Tahrir Square movement.  Especially remarkable was an evening panel of three formidable thinkers and actors of Middle East policy discourse:  Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Defence and Foreign Secretary of the UK, and current member of British parliament;  Mr. Amir Taheri, former Editor-in Chief of Iranian Keyhan and French Jeune Afrique, international journalist and writer; and Mr.  Abd al-Bari Atwan, outstanding Palestinian journalist, the editor-in chief of the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

Discussion boosted many reflections and, I believe, controversial perceptions by attending participants. Disclosure of those impressions might take more space than a single blog posting provides. I will only highlight hereby one point of mutual agreement and one point of conflicting views articulated by a variety of contributors.   

Public indignation was not rested on merely poverty challenges (Prof. Gilbert Anchcar – SOAS Development Studies Department); it was not a revolt of poor people, regimes in Egypt and Tunisia fell victims of their economic success (Amir Taheri); the developments were rooted in bitter sense of humiliation and resentment (Abd al-Bari Atwan); regimes have not been able to establish a stable state model to combine Islamic identity, economic growth and institutional balance (Sir Malcolm Rifkind).

What the evening panelists did disagree was about how far beyond national borders did reasons of people resentment go? What were wider regional context and the role of the West that engendered the uprising? Mr. Abd al-Bari Atwan has gained the audience support while stressing upon commonality of Arab challenges and disappointments about social injustice and struggle for legitimate demands and peace in Middle East. The earlier young Tahrir Square activist’s  disclosure that it was not a facebook, but disappointments of Palestinians’ struggle and implications of Iraq invasions, which brought the people to raise their voices, had actually resonated with this view point. 

Amir Taheri was not leaning to recognize the resurrection of Arab unity, or commonality: his view has emphasized the social nature of resentment and referred to middle class revolution, which has not taken placed yet until an actual overhaul comes to the system of government institutions.  The time of pan-Arab nationalism has been left in fifties of the last century, -  claimed Mr. Tahiri.

The concluding point that conveyed the emotional stand of the international student audience was sounded by a student girl in her address to former Foreign Secretary : the sense of disappointment and resentments were engendered by the US and UK support to aggressor and its unfair claims – to Israel.

I have been all the time in touch with my compatriots in Azerbaijan, political scientists and journalists who had had considerable international experience and civil society practices. Remarks of a renown civil society activist, journalist has been concurrent with the cry of a young lady in SOAS: “I am sure that roots of all evil in the world: terrorism, discredit  upon democracy, advancement of political Islam,  antidemocratic regimes in Moslem world and  threats to the peace go to the unfair  American policy coordinated with Israel. ”