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Pluralism needs to be the underlying foundation for the political operating system of the Arab world.
There is a real danger that international observers monitoring Egypt’s constitutional referendum will lend legitimacy to a flawed and undemocratic process.
Until the Arab governments undertake security sector reform, the Arab Spring countries—and others that have experienced post-conflict transition, such as Iraq—risk lapsing into new, hybrid forms of authoritarian rule and descending into ever-widening civil strife.
Egypt’s new constitution and referendum are more likely to exacerbate tensions and divisions in the country’s politics than to form part of a democratic transition.
It is time for the United States to abandon its involvement in G8’s “Forum for the Future” and redirect its efforts toward designing a more constructive regional platform for direct dialogue with Arab civil society.
Restoring the kind of stability that would allow the Egyptian government to make clear economic decisions is going to require not just a government in control, but also a government that has a lot more consensus.
The Somali terrorist group al-Shabab catapulted onto the international stage after its September attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
The Arab transformations have only just begun. The coming year will offer signs as to whether countries of the Arab world are heading toward or away from democracy and pluralism.
The big winners of Egypt’s constitutional draft are the very institutions that overturned the Morsi government.
The leaders of Egypt’s pre-2011 institutions may see an opportunity in the current popular climate to retake—and even broaden—the powers they enjoyed under Mubarak.