On a regular basis, there are reports of young people in the Arab world engaging in concerning political activity. While the media often focuses on the sensational, and thus is often unrepresentative, it is undeniable that a worrying number of young people in this region are drifting towards jingoistic ultranationalism on the one hand, or reactionary extremism on the other. Is that the future for the youth of this region – a choice between these two rather dismal options?
The way in which nationalism has been deployed as a way to reinforce a unity in a chauvinism that has not been seen for decades remains deeply disturbing. It ranges from accusations of treason by Egyptian media outlets when a critique of government policy is wrongly seen as threatening national security, to far worse examples, where young people are encouraged to join the Syrian Shabiha as tools of Bashar Al Assad’s ruinous regime.
That’s a type of right-wing reactionary ideology that the likes of ISIL and other extremist Islamists are competing with. In Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, these other types of radical right wing ideologues are trying to draw away the young people of the region into horrifying utopianism. Young people dream of changing the world – and ISIL promises them that the world will be changed before their eyes, right then and there. Indeed, the part of the world where ISIL holds territory is, appallingly, changed from what it once was.
Before the revolutionary uprisings of 2011, the issue of fresh, inspiring political ideas for young people in the Arab world was still pertinent. It was not any developed political ideology that led to the uprisings themselves – in many ways, it was a bankruptcy of existing political ideas that led them to take direct and raw action against the systems that had stifled young and old alike for so long. The political elite that held onto power never saw it coming.
Now, the discussion has taken on a new imperative – because it is no longer simply about channelling the energy of young people into constructive politics. The discussion is now about how to stop young people from being pulled into the most destructive kind of politics there can be, in terms of extremism and violence.
When the uprisings began in 2011 and in some countries, such as Egypt and Tunisia, citizens began to become more engaged with the ballot box, the political ideas on offer were neither fresh nor inspiring. While there were new parties, they were usually based on old, stale and impoverished ideas – Nasserism, Brotherhood Islamism and others. As ISIL’s momentum began to steamroll through Iraq and Syria, against the backdrop of political turmoil in both of those countries, it could make the claim of being successful and unique.
The lesson to be learnt from ISIL’s rise isn’t that violence and destruction works. Rather, it bears testimony to the wasteland that is the Arab political ideological arena in the 21st century – and it is only in such a wilderness that something such as ISIL, and extremist nationalism, can thrive.
Time is not on their side – many of the issues that so animate young people are not going to get any better any time soon. On the contrary, across the Arab world from Tunisia to Iraq, we have to expect that more people will join radical ideological formations of one type or another. And it must be the job of all sectors of society to try to minimise the shelf-life of the attraction of these formations.
The good news is that ISIL, eventually, will fail. It cannot deliver on its claims. But the bad news is that, in the meantime, it could damage a generation of young people – and what comes after it may well be a lot worse. If the political elites of this region are keen to avoid more of their young people going down these routes of stupor, there are two things that remain necessary now, as they were prior to the revolutionary uprisings of 2011.
Firstly, new political ideas have to be openly and genuinely discussed – by civil society and by political elites – in a way that ensures such ideas are rooted in this region and can justifiably claim to be from the soil and history of this area. Politics in many ways is a way to express one’s identity – and if the identity of these ideas is not recognisably from this area, they will never be able to compete in the same way as ideologies that can make that argument. That is the case even if those latter ideologies are extreme beyond recognition.
The second point for this region to note – particularly those in authority – is that political ideas are often as much a reflection of the environment from which they are born as they are a way to affect change in that environment. If the environment is repressive or restricted, existing political ideas are likely to become more narrow – and new political ideas may simply mirror that narrowness.
If we want young people to avoid the pull of more radical ideas, they need to have genuine alternatives that can address their desire to change and build their societies in a constructive fashion. If that is ignored that, or even worse, if it is stifled, then others will take advantage – and it won’t be to the benefit of meaningful development of this region.
Dr HA Hellyer is an associate fellow in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, and the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC
On Twitter: @hahellyer