󰁣󰁨󰁡󰁰󰁴󰁥󰁲 󰁳󰁩󰁸
 Revolt Against Kleptocracy
The Arab Spring: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, 󰀲󰀰󰀱󰀱
 A
year later, in mid-January 󰀲󰀰󰀱󰀱, I was returning to Washington from a trip to Afghanistan. By then I was working as a special assistant to Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who two years before had confronted me in a Pentagon hallway, worried about having to call my mother with condolences. I stopped for a few days’ layover in Paris, my home base since 󰀱󰀹󰀹󰀳. I treasured the moments to catch my breath there, as I shuttled between Kandahar and the Pentagon—alien worlds, both.But Paris, that January, was hardly becalmed. The unimaginable was transpiring in former colonies across the Mediterranean—countries with which France has retained intense human and political ties. A wild-fire of protest was ripping through North Africa, against the rule of long-standing despots. The myth of Arab servility, some genetic proclivity to autocratic rule, was dissolving. Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had run tiny Tunisia for nearly twenty-five years, had just come crashing down. France was reverberating with the shock.
W󰁨󰁯’󰁳 N󰁥󰁸󰁴󰀿
 blared giant letters across the top of the newspaper I picked up as I boarded my flight to D.C. Mug shots of half a dozen Arab leaders, from King Muhammad VI of Morocco to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, hung in a row across the page. In Washington, I was still throbbing with the jolt. “What do you
 
󰀶󰀸 | 󰁴󰁨󰁩󰁥󰁶󰁥󰁳 󰁯󰁦 󰁳󰁴󰁡󰁴󰁥
make of
Tunisia
?” I fired at colleagues. What I got back, largely, were shrugs. Not until Egyptians poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square a few days later, demanding Mubarak’s head—forcing their urgent demands into the consciousness of U.S. officials who had long found him conve-nient—did Washington begin to grasp the significance of the hurtling events in the Middle East. For me, it seemed the most important upheaval in the international political order since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 󰀱󰀹󰀸󰀹.Within days I was begging Mullen to send me. I spoke Arabic. I had lived in Morocco as a Peace Corps volunteer, had reported on the grisly Algerian civil war in the 󰀱󰀹󰀹󰀰s. I could provide a perspective that dif-fered from what his system was telling him—just as I did for Afghani-stan. I asked to cross the continent, comparing countries whose regimes had fallen with those where they hung on. I promised him I’d skip Libya, already a hot war.The contrast between my sense of the unfolding events and what Mullen was hearing from his Joint Staff was stark. By then, Moroccan demonstrators were in the streets, sometimes clashing with police in gritty Casablanca—not trying to unseat their king but, almost book-ishly, requesting detailed constitutional changes. They wanted to vote for their prime minister; they wanted an independent judiciary, a reduc-tion in the king’s powers. They cited the English model as a constitu-tional monarchy that made sense. Algeria, I knew, remained an asphyxiated place, run behind the scenes by decrepit generals, its population still too shattered by the 󰀱󰀹󰀹󰀰s carnage to contemplate change.That was not how the uniform military was viewing these countries, as I discovered when I asked for a briefing from officers on the North Africa desk. We were, they informed me, “pleased with the relationship” with the Moroccan government. We only hoped its long-term defense planning would “focus on counterterrorism.” In Algeria, too, our objec-tive was to “improve counterterrorism relations”; our main worry was that “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb might find a haven” there. Indeed it might, but no one seemed to be wondering why. As for Tunisia—which had just made history by overthrowing an autocrat in a swift, broad-based, nonviolent upheaval, similar to the
 
Revolt Against Kleptocracy
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loudly applauded anti-Soviet revolutions in Eastern Europe two decades before—we had no intention of showing “favoritism” to its nascent democracy by providing any extra support.Terrorism, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was as though nothing had just happened.I thought the Arab revolutions changed everything. I thought they should upend U.S. strategic posture, which for so long had been framed in reaction to radical Islam. For decades, I wrote Mullen, extremism had been the only outlet for people to express their legitimate griev-ances. Autocratic governments liked it that way, because the extremist alternatives to their rule were frightening—to the United States and other international donors, but often to their own citizens as well. “We would prefer thieves to murderers,” an Algerian shopkeeper later put it to me, when I asked her about corruption. There was evidence that several of these governments had deliberately targeted their repression against the most thoughtful, reasoned, and moderate leadership over the years, while covertly facilitating militant groups to serve as ogres to scare people.But now, by way of the cascading revolutions, populations across the Arab world had opened a different outlet for their grievances. Instead of supporting Al Qaeda, or sneaking off to join the ranks of a violent local offshoot, they had rebuffed religious extremism and ignited a popular uprising, focusing on dignity, social justice, and the substance, not just the empty form, of democracy. That was a reaction Americans should admire, since it so resembled our own founding revolt against autocracy.There was a chance, I argued in those early 󰀲󰀰󰀱󰀱 days, that radical Islam might be losing relevance in the wake of the Arab Spring. It was a fragile moment of opportunity. The United States should do whatever it could to promote that outcome.
A󰁦󰁴󰁥󰁲 󰁡󰁳󰁫󰁩󰁮󰁧 󰁦󰁯󰁲
a memo detailing what might go wrong, Mullen authorized the trip. I began it in familiar Morocco. I had lived there in the 󰀱󰀹󰀸󰀰s and spoke its peculiar dialect of Arabic. In the capital, Rabat, I found an old hotel with a terrace, opposite the tasteful yellow parliament building.
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