The Arab Spring Fear Factor

Fear, in all its manifestations, played an important role in the Arab Spring revolutions in 2011.

Anyone who participated in these revolutions this past year, as well as those who watched it from afar, learned a lot about it.

We saw how deeply tyrannical regimes had instilled fear and how quickly and decisively that fear of authority could crumble.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to David Kirkpatrick, who says he learned a lot about fear this year. Kirkpatrick took over as the Cairo bureau chief of The New York Times, just days before the region was swept up in the Arab Spring.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Fear was a key factor in many of the rebellions of the Arab Spring this past year. We saw how deeply authoritarian regimes can instill fear in their citizens. We also realized how quickly and decisively that fear authority could crumble. David Kirkpatrick says he learned a lot about fear this year. Kirkpatrick became Cairo bureau chief of The New York Times just days before the Arab Spring started to sweep the region. He began his stint in early January with a trip to Tunisia. He says that at the time people there feared even talking to outsiders.

David Kirkpatrick: The one local journalist I could get to talk to me would only speak with me walking at night along a darkened road so that he wouldn’t be seen by the secret police. And then afternoon before Ben Ali’s speech I went out to visit, I’d seen a Facebook notice that there was gonna be some kind of a protest or gathering in the beachtown where the Ben Ali had their summer homes, the town of Hammamet, sort of like the East Hamptons of Tunis. And I went out there. By the time I got there not only had there been a gathering, but the people had risen up and pretty much chased away the police. A few officers were huddled around their station saying no, no, no, no, no, leave us alone, don’t attack us, go burn the family mansions. And that’s in fact what they were doing. The protestors were already looting the Ben Ali family mansions. And I thought my gosh, this has really turned on its head. And they would show me pictures of themselves with videos they had taken with their cellphones. And they would point to it and they would say look, it’s the people of Tunis, the people of Tunis, here we are. And I went back to me hotel room to write what I thought was gonna be a pretty good story about the looting in Hammamet. And Ben Ali, the president, came on the television. And you could hear that the fear had moved; the people weren’t afraid, but he was. And he said I understand, I understand, and you know what, from now on you’ll have more freedoms, you’ll have the right to assemble, I won’t send the police out to breakup the crowds. Tunisians heard that as a green light, as an invitation to come out. And the next day they pretty much filled downtown on Avenue Bourguiba in front of the Interior Ministry. It was wall-to-wall people calling for Ben Ali to leave. And the amazing thing was even before he did leave they were already talking like he had left. He was gone in their minds, it was over. And they were saying things already like you know what’s happening here today is gonna change the whole Arab world.

Werman: Yeah, that’s incredible. It’s a moment where the fear just gets transferred from the people to the executive, which is what happened in Egypt, critically on January 28 at the Kasr Al Nile bridge. You were there too. Tell us what happened and why that standoff was key to the Egyptian revolution.

Kirkpatrick: Well, that was the day, the 25th of January was the day when the protestors first came out and really stunned the world with the breadth of the uprising and I think surprised themselves. But that day was beaten back. By the 28th, which is now known as the Friday of Rage, everybody knew that it was on, so to speak. The interior ministry had turned off the internet and called out its troops and ringed Tahrir Square. The protestors had called everyone to meet at the mosques and march from there towards Tahrir. The interior ministry troops had deployed themselves at strategic locations to try and head that off. And on the Kasr Al Nile bridge there were I think thousands of interior ministry troops with head gear, and clubs, and rubber bullets, and tear gas and water hoses positioned to beat back the protestors. And coming across the bridge there was again, thousands of unarmed protestors. And they surged forward against this wall of riot police. And they would get beaten back, but not all the way. And they would push back again, I couldn’t believe it, against the tear gas and against the rebels, and against the water hoses. They would push back against the mob of police. And it went back and forth all day like a seesaw, back and forth, back and forth. And I realized once the fear is gone, once legitimacy of the government has collapsed completely, it takes an awful lot of rubber bullets, and it takes an awful lot of tear gas to try and crush even an unarmed crowd. I think in that case it would have taken a Tiananmen Square style massacre and I don’t think the Egyptian government had the stomach for it. I don’t think they could’ve gotten their troops to execute it, and who knows what kind of explosion it would have elicited from the Egyptian people. And by the end of the day the police had vanished. They had run off and the unarmed protestors stormed across the bridge and made it to Tahrir Square. And they stayed there until Mubarak was gone on February 11th.

Werman: And then onto Libya, David, whose narrative took a much more violent path than Egypt and Tunisia. You watched the slow unraveling of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Tell us about that and what stands out for you.

Kirkpatrick: Well, none of us were there, none of us western journalists were there really the moment that things really broke because the Libyan state is so closed. I now know what it was like on the Friday after Mubarak fell. When people were sort of terrified and didn’t know what was happening, but they came streaming out of the mosques, and they were chanting these, these, the Libyans are these…a home, a home, at Libya a home. And they took Tripoli. Just as in Cairo, the police fled. Tripoli was completely upside down. It was out of Gaddafi’s control. He didn’t really have an army, but he had a series of militias controlled by his sons and his close allies, and they came in. And they crushed Tripoli. And then sort of astonishingly, he invited in the western press. So I flew in on the 26th. The amazing thing was you could see they were still painting over the anti-Gaddafi graffiti and there were even a few neighborhoods that still weren’t under his control. So I always knew having seen those neighborhoods and seen a couple towns that were still holding out against him before they were crushed, that the peace that he had brought to Tripoli was brought at the point of a gun. It was all by coercion and intimidation. But then again, when it went it went fast.

Werman: I’m wondering, David Kirkpatrick, what you think the whole Libya experience tells us about the role of fear among these different groups in society and the internal divisions that are created as a result of that?

Kirkpatrick: Well, Gaddafi, really from the moment he was challenged stoked sort of tribal and regional fears. He was saying from the beginning you know, to the tribes in the west that had always been loyal to him, that if you let these rebels, these tribes from the east takeover it’s going to go ill for you. There was not idea of a nation the way there was in Tunisia or Egypt. There was no sense of national unity. And so what was going on through the revolution and is still going on now in Libya is an effort to try and forge that sense of a national unit, of a national community where people are no longer afraid of each other and try to discuss their differences civilly and elect a democratic government. And to be honest it’s still a long road there. We still see a very weak government struggling to control its own armed forces and the country really governed by a series of little city states that lead the rebellion. And it’s not clear how they’re gonna finally submit to some national democratic authority.

Werman: David Kirkpatrick, Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times. He joined us from the Egyptian capital. Truly extraordinary year in the Arab world, David, thanks for speaking with us about it.

Kirkpatrick: It was my pleasure.

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