Harsh realities
Le Monde arabe: Enjeux sociaux, perspectives méditerranéennes [The Arab World: Social Stakes and Mediterranean Perspectives], Samir Amin & Ali El Kenz
Co-written by Samir Amin, who contributes chapters on contemporary Arab society, and by Ali El Kenz, who discusses the Arab World and the Mediterranean, the present book examines two phenomena that have come to light in the Arab world over the past decade or so: the development of civil society and the emergence of structures for "Euro-Arab dialogue" under European Union patronage. Published jointly by L'Harmattan in Paris and by the Forum de Tiers-Monde and Forum mondial des Alternatives in Dakar and Louvain La Neuve, it is the product of research sponsored by the latter two organisations and by other NGOs and European government agencies. On the whole it is sceptical both about the explosion in civil-society groups in some parts of the Arab world over the past decade and about the value of officially sponsored Euro-Arab and Euro-Mediterranean dialogue.
For Samir Amin, the distinguished economist and a frequent contributor to these pages, while the growth in civil-society groups, or non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in parts of the Arab world over the past decade cannot be denied, its significance has not always been what might have been hoped. In an energetic and tightly compressed opening chapter, Amin notes that over the past 20 years, 55,000 civil-society organisations have been registered in Algeria, 15,000 in Egypt and 18,000 in Morocco, and while he does not give exact figures for the rest of the Arab world he thinks a total of over 100,000 civil-society organisations has been registered.
These groups work in five different areas, Amin says, and they are financed by a mix of state and private funding, the latter often coming from abroad. The five areas are: organisations providing services that at one time, or in other places, would have been thought of as the responsibility of the state, such as health, education, or social services; organisations managing specific development projects, such as projects to encourage business, to give training, or to administer small- business credit schemes; organisations engaged in the defence of human rights, or other varieties of rights, such as those of women; organisations devoted to the defence of cultural rights, for example those of minorities, and organisations devoted to the cause of business in the form of lobby groups.
While conventional discourse on the growth and spread of civil-society groups in many parts of the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union has emphasised their positive value as a counter-weight to the state and as a guarantee of the right of citizens to join together in the pursuit of their interests, Amin sees the growth of civil-society groups in the Arab World as something of a trompe l'oeil, or mirage. Though it may have been the case, as has often been pointed out, that it was impossible for citizens of the former Soviet Union to set up as much as a club for stamp-collectors without official approval, according to Amin the present fashionable appreciation of civil-society organisations has tended, in the Arab case at least, towards blindness regarding their actual role and influence. Most of them are not genuinely independent of the state, he says, and therefore do not genuinely represent civil society, and those that are genuinely independent have often been timid or constrained in their activities.
Amin points out that various factors are involved in any estimation of the actual influence of such organisations. Who benefits, for example, from the services offered by such groups, and do they make real and measurable impacts in fields that they have made their own, such as family-planning and other forms of health and social services? In addition to the question of impacts, there is also the question of funding and responsibility. To whom are such groups responsible, given that a major source of their funding seems to come from abroad, or from special-interest groups at home, such as various religious groups? Amin points out that it has sometimes been the case that civil-society groups, in their efforts to gain funding from foreign governments and from international organisations and foundations, have tailored their activities to those likely to be approved by the funding agency concerned. This may not be a bad thing, but it does bear on the question of who the groups are responsible to and who holds the purse strings. It also calls into question how far such groups, or some of them, can be characterised as "grass- roots" organisations.
However, Amin's main criticism of those who would uncritically praise the recent growth of civil-society groups is that these have sometimes operated as a "screen" for the failures of the state itself, which has tended to withdraw from the tasks, energetically pursued during the post-independence period, of providing employment, healthcare and education to its citizens.
"On the whole", Amin says, "the activities carried out by civil society are neither more efficient nor better managed than those carried out by public services. Examining them on a case-by-case basis, one discovers that most of the projects thought up by offices inspired by 'donors' (the World Bank in particular) are ill thought out, poorly adapted to local conditions and do not answer to real problems...When compared to the terms of reference announced in the discourse inspiring most of these actions, their results have been mediocre. Poverty is increasing, and the proportion of the 'target population' benefiting from the policies carried out has remained minor."
In fact, Amin says, the explosion of civil-society groups in Arab countries over the past decade has served to underline the collapse of "alternative perspectives" for the future, aside from their further integration into a system he describes as being managed from elsewhere and having priorities other than their development. "Present circumstances," he says, "are marked by the fragmentation of social and political struggle: the ideological vacuum produced by the erosion, and then the collapse, of projects for nationalist and popular society and for really existing socialism, has deprived such struggle of the possibility of posing credible alternatives, at least for the present. Dominant discourse invites such struggle to renounce any possibility of posing alternatives, instead being content to manage 'things as they are'."
With some exceptions, he concludes, the role of Arab NGOs has been a managerial one, based on an acceptance of the "principle of false consensus". However, civil-society does have an important, indeed crucial, role to play, if that role is more traditionally conceived as being oppositional in character: "social and political struggles carried out with, among or against the parties, unions, professional associations and organisations fighting for democracy, human rights, or the rights of workers and women open perspectives for possible alternatives. This creative dimension of political and civil society engaged in the struggle to transform social relations is the foundation on which a different future for peoples and nations can be built, and one that is more just, more equitable and more concerned with individual freedom."
Ali El Kenz's analysis of recent developments in Euro-Arab and Euro- Mediterranean dialogue expresses similar scepticism both about the results of this dialogue and about its motives. For example, the "Euro-Mediterranean Partnership" launched with great fanfare at the 1995 Barcelona Conference is, El Kenz thinks, "above all a 'defence agreement' to protect the EU against the possible social, political and cultural 'swamping' that could come from the southern shores of the Mediterranean... [it] is the expression of a 'more civilised' European way of doing things, when compared to the brutality of the American approach."
At present, he feels, Euro-Mediterranean dialogue, turning on "one of the most sensitive international frontiers of our time", that between Europe and North and Sub-Saharan Africa, ignores the most significant features of that frontier: the far- greater wealth and influence of the countries to the north of it and the fact that the European countries have excluded the countries, and citizens, of the south from that prosperity.
El Kenz calls these things the "harsh realities" of Euro-Mediterranean or Euro- Arab dialogue, noting that Belgium, one of the smallest EU states, has a GDP greater than that of the nine Mediterranean Arab states combined. While trade is increasing between the two sides of the Mediterranean, the terms of that trade are in the EU's favour, with the EU continuing to "tax heavily the products of the southern Mediterranean countries, while demanding that they open their borders still further to free trade". Many southern Mediterranean countries "are facing the pressures of growing numbers of young people seeking education, work and incomes, while the states are in crisis and unable to respond to such demands... and the European 'partner' seems unready to respond and has even made these countries compete with those of Central and Eastern Europe." Meanwhile, he feels, "Euro-Mediterranean Partnership", has mostly been about EU support for the privatisation of public-sector companies and economic restructuring in the southern Mediterranean countries, mixed with an "institutional bulimia" of EU-sponsored research centres and programmes.
Both Amin and El Kenz write from a left-wing perspective, and Amin, in particular, has a synoptic, broad-ranging style that takes in much more than just the "social stakes" of the Arab countries. Indeed, much of his discussion is given over to what he feels has been the failure of the EU to differentiate itself adequately from the agenda set by the United States, acting instead, he thinks, as its agent. Reviewing the record of the various EU member states in their policies towards the Arab World, for example, he remarks that the United Kingdom "has chosen to align itself unconditionally with the United States... implying the constitution of an Anglophone bloc (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)... that feels itself as one faced with all the other cultures of the planet."
During the recent US-led invasion of Iraq, right-wing commentators in British and US newspapers talked about what they called an "anglosphere" of countries prepared to line up behind the United States, apparently drawing on Churchill's notion of the "English-speaking peoples". It would be a pity if, after many decades during which the insularity of Anglo-Saxon culture was steadily and successfully reduced, this notion were now to be resuscitated, or resuscitated in this way.
Reviewed by David Tresilian
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 18 - 24 September 2003 (Issue No. 656)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/656/bo3.htm