Ayoon Wa Azan - Davos 2012 (2

Dr. Ahmed Zewail, the Egyptian scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999, is very optimistic about the future of Arab countries and their peoples. In An Insight, An Idea with Ahmed Zewaila, a session devoted exclusively for his talk, he even made the case for how science can solve global challenges, and not Arab challenges alone. I know that Dr. Ahmed Zewail is trying to make the case for optimism, as he is now a champion of education reform in Egypt, with a personal focus on building a society of science and technology. After this introduction, I must admit that I find that it is not quite right for a journalist like me, who studied literature because he did not do well in science, to contradict a scientist like Zewail. But nonetheless, I want to say that I am not optimistic at all, and do not see what he sees. Instead, I see that every citizen who can bear arms in Libya is doing so, that education in Egypt is in shambles, and that the economy there is in an even worse condition. I see that Sudan has been partitioned into two countries yet the fighting continues, that Yemen, which was called Happy Yemen two thousand years ago, is being contested by four oppositions in the North, the South and the Huthis and al-Qaeda, and that Iraq is on the verge of civil war. And I see that killing in Syria will continue, because the government there will not defeat the opposition, and the opposition will not defeat the government. Despite all this, Dr. Ahmed Zuwail is optimistic. Today I shall attempt, as I did yesterday, to convey to the reader what I heard at the annual session of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Thomas Friedman, renowned American journalist, is in turn optimistic. He believes that the fruits of the Arab spring will not be immediate, but would need a generation to emerge, as we saw with the socialist bloc following the fall of communism. I write with a sketch drawn by Thomas Friedman in front of me, in which he explains his idea. He drew a straight line, starting from the year 1990, the year the communist camp collapsed, with an arrowhead in the beginning pointing down and an arrowhead at its end pointing up, marked December 2011, in reference to what has been achieved by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in 21 years, or a generation after the fall of communism. If the prominent New York Times commentator’s idea is correct, we will have to wait a whole generation before we can reap the fruits of the Arab spring, because the gestation period of the revolution is not nine months, but rather a generation. I cannot judge Tom’s ideas, since I will probably have forgotten my name in 21 years. I leave it to the reader to agree or disagree with Friedman, without being influenced by my doubts. Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but presented the situation as it is, in a small session attended by journalists only. He said that the world population has reached seven billion, and that the number would increase by 500 million in five years, and spoke about the environment, energy, Iran and other issues. With regard to the Arab spring, Ban Ki-moon said that the United Nations has advised Arab leaders to listen to their people. Some did, and some didn’t and failed, according to the UN Secretary General. He then called on all Arab leaders to do more for their peoples. Ban Ki-moon’s statements left me puzzled; do more of what? As long as there is no democracy, then more of the same means more oppression, although I am certain this is not what Ban Ki-moon meant. I left the hall with him, but I did not tell him that those leaders never listened to their people, so why would he believe they will listen to them now. Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke at another session about the likelihood of Iran producing a nuclear bomb, which was also attended by Richard Haass, chairman of the American Council on Foreign Relations, and who as usual spoke objectively and accurately. Barak said that the world will not be stable with Iran in possession of that bomb, but what he means is that Israel will not be stable. I paused at his accusation against Iran of “sponsoring terrorism”, and his specific reference to Hezbollah. I want to reiterate here that Israel is the mother of all terrorism, and that Hezbollah and Hamas are both national liberation movements, the existence of which Israel itself is responsible for, amid the ongoing occupation, killing and destruction in the Palestinian territories. This year at least, the Egyptian participants did not rush back home one after the other like they did following the eruption of the youth revolution on 25/1/2011, like Hassan Haikal did. This year, his brother Ahmed and his wife Mai, daughter of Dr. Nabil el-Arabi, stayed with us, along with a number of senior businessmen. But I want to conclude with the famous Islamic preacher Amr Khaled, who was in Davos for yet another year. When we met, he reminded me of our conversation last year, when he asked me at the start of the youth revolution, whether President Hosni Mubarak will listen to the Egyptian people? I told Khaled back then that the president is stubborn and he will resist, and Amr said that the way the revolution progressed showed that I knew how the president thinks. I told him that I wish I was wrong, and that Hosni Mubarak had listened to his people.