Learning from Arab Spring

From the perspective of European colonial powers and their mapmakers, the Middle East describes the area that separates Europe from the Far East. The more neutral geographic description would be West Asia-North Africa (Wana). Whether Wana or Middle East, unfortunately, the region is more peripheral than central in the consciousness of most Filipinos.

Wana covers the broad expanse of land from Morocco eastward to Pakistan and from Iran southward to Sudan. The Philippines does engage with some of the Wana countries on specific issues. News from the region emerges in the media mainly in the context of crisis situations for Philippine nationals: crimes committed against, or by, Filipino overseas workers and the inevitable involvement of politicians in the ensuing investigation, litigation and appeals process.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ estimate of 2.9 million Filipino workers in Wana should offer enough reason for greater interest in the region. Our Muslim minority population can make and have made appeals for economic and political support from the Islamic states of Wana. Filipino Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But the region also holds the most sacred shrines of both the Old and the New Testaments. The supply and price of Wana oil impact on our economic growth. Instability in the region places our economy and Philippine nationals at risk.

Since 2009, leading public intellectuals from the Wana region have gathered in an annual Forum convened by HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, with the strong personal and institutional support of Nippon Foundation Chair Yohei Sasakawa. Conceived as apolitical, and independent, the Forum has provided a platform for promoting dialogue among a regional Third Domain of partners from government, the private sector and civil society.

The advent of Arab Spring, starting in Yemen in December 2010 and blooming across the region in the following year, dramatized the common concerns confronting the region and the need to formulate a consensus on a collaborative strategy to address them. Mass protest action, arising from the failure to respect human rights and correct social and economic inequities, demonstrated the depth of popular anger at the authoritarian regimes in the region and proved the timeliness of the Wana initiative.

Filipinos applauded the Arab Spring, which recalled their own experience of the people power revolution at Edsa in 1986, a generation ago. They could identify with the thousands of Egyptians who crowded Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand rights and reforms, defied the police use of force, and succeeded in bringing down Hosni Mubarak.

But the Philippine experience had also shown that deposing a dictator was only the first step.  Restoring the rule of law within a democratic framework was the more difficult task.

The countries in the region suffer from similar problems of unemployment, running at 60 percent for the region. Political oppression and internal conflicts have uprooted and displaced over 27 million people. But some states, sitting on their reserves of oil, rank among the highest in the world in terms of per capita GDP. Accepting the reality that the outcome of the revolutionary changes taking place in the region may differ from the aspiration, the Forum chose Region in Transition as the theme of its 3rd Forum in 2011.

Participants at the 4th Wana Forum in Amman last week underlined the need for greater regional solidarity. Problems such as environmental degradation and diminishing sources of water pose challenges that cannot be effectively met at the level of the individual state. One country’s attempt to control such a crucial resource as water can only lead to more intense conflict.

If it succeeds in transforming Wana from more than a geographical expression into a force that can push the implementation of regional programs, the Forum will have much to teach us in the use of traditional values and systems to build social cohesion, manage post-conflict reconstruction and recovery, and protect the region’s communal resources. It is exploring the Arabic concept of hima or protected area as a land-use zoning approach comparable to the Community-Based Natural Resources Management System and adopting Islamic legal theory to establish nomadic rights to common property.

Not all of the Wana countries are blessed with oil resources. Still, it is striking that the Forum has placed on the agenda programs to green the economy, including the development of mass transit systems using buses and even trains powered by electricity. Alternative energy sources may help the oil countries conserve their natural resources, but the emergence of electric vehicles for the mass market will also reduce the flow of petrodollars and the influence that comes from wealth.

The Wana region still faces many problems.  But it should not be surprising to find that the people who shaped the cradle of civilization can still have much to share with the world.

Edilberto C. de Jesus is president of the Asian Institute of Management.