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Gilbert Achcar
Gilbert Achcar’s forthcoming book, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013) is due out later this year. He was interviewed in December 2012 by International Socialist Review , reproduced at International Viewpoint and Znet.
THE MOST general comment to make is that, for the first time in the history of the region, things are really moving and changing, and changing very fast at that, so that the region entered what I call a long-term revolutionary process. It is a tremendous change in the history of the region. Blockages of all sorts are exploding. I think it will remain with us for many many years to come.
You mentioned blockages, do you mean in part the existence of sclerotic or aging dictatorial regimes? The first would be Tunisia. Can you say something about that and the present situation in Tunisia?
YES, BUT it’s larger than just dictatorial regimes. Of course that’s the most visible part of it, what was most directly affected by the uprisings in the countries where they have achieved victories until now. But this is one part of a more general blockage that involves an economic blockage. The region lags behind the rest of the world in economic growth and more generally in development, despite being endowed with very important natural resources. It holds the world record in unemployment rates, and that has been the case for decades, and thus you have a social blockage going on, not to mention the very obvious one related to the condition of women. So you have a whole set of blockages and I just mentioned a few and the most prominent ones, and all this is now bursting out in this huge explosion which started in Tunisia.