 Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this conversation, discussion, questions and answers session with Professor Gilbert Asghar from SOAS. I'm Dina Matar. I'm the chair of the Center for Palestine Studies, and I also teach at the Center for Global Media and Communication at SOAS. And this is an event that I think is overdue where we need to talk about 10 years following the Arab uprising and what lessons we have learned and thinking about what is going on. And we really have the best possible academic, can I say, activist, concerned person to talk about this, Professor Asghar. So we're really delighted to have him here to talk about his reflections and also around his, you know, kind of knowledge around what is going on in the Arab world at the moment. And of course, while doing this, we have to remember all those people whose lives were lost, all those people who have been displaced in these uprisings that were demanding really very basic human rights. And so we salute them and, you know, we kind of are very proud of their agency in very difficult circumstances. So Professor Asghar is a professor in the Development Studies department. He is the esteemed author of many important books, not the least, two books on the Arab uprisings of 2011. The people want and morbid symptoms. The way we are going to do this is I'm going to pose some kind of opening questions to Gilbert unless he wants to start talking. And then, you know, further questions and so on. So it'll be like a conversation. And kind of, we will try and finish in about 40 minutes for zero minutes, and then we will open to questions. So maybe it'll be less than that. Maybe it'll be 30 minutes, because we would like to have your intervention. So the event hosted by the SOAS Middle East Institute, we thank them for the support for these events. Gilbert, do you want to come in? Yes, Dean, I want to come in to thank you for having organized this event. I mean, you're right that SOAS should be in organizing something like this with our own staff. I remember when I was appointed for the chair at SOAS. And I told that to a French colleague who told me, oh, you're going to the Mecca of Middle East and North Africa studies. I remember the formula he used. And indeed, I mean, we have at SOAS quite a pool of specialists, a unique pool of specialists of the region. And you are one of them, for sure. And most of us, all of us actually, those who work on Middle East and North Africa have been working on various aspects of these big upheaval that started a little more than 10 years ago. So it's very appropriate that we organize this, even though it was done at a very short notice because, yeah, I mean, the decision was taken to organize this evening, the seminar just two weeks ago. So I'm very glad to be here with you and thank you again. Oh, thank you, Gilbert. And also thank you for all the participants who are here and for coming on this Wednesday evening. So we just want to start with a few kind of opening questions. And, you know, it seems that the region, the Middle East and North Africa seems to be kind of almost absent from the international discourse and in the mainstream media discourse. But that doesn't mean nothing is going on. So I just wanted to kind of ask, should we perhaps reflect on the kind of the debate that has become quite negative about the region and about the Arab Spring. There's been a lot of work around the Arab Spring turning to an Arab winter, for example. And try and say, are we, you know, considering that there are popular mobilizations taking place in different parts of the region. Are we waiting for another 2011 moment? Well, you're absolutely right to point to the shifts in the discourses, especially the media, actually, the media coverage of the region, but also some academic publications or academic writings on the region. You can see the shifting mood over the years. And very sharp contrast between the euphoria of 2011, the time of what was called the Arab Spring, especially the very early moment, the, let's say, between the two first month of 2011, when you add in January the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia and then in February, the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. So that brought the euphoria at a very high point at a peak. The spectacle of Tahrir Square in Cairo and all that, that has become, you know, part of a major iconographic history, one could say, because these images are everywhere now. And then this idea that the occupation of the square became so important that we found replicas or movement inspired by it in various places, including Occupy, the Occupy movement in the United States, for instance, Occupy Wall Street, and others in Spain, in Greece, in several countries. So there was a euphoric moment, I would say, in 2011. But that was euphoria based on a lot of illusions about what was happening. At first I would say tending to project on the region, maybe the shape of events that had happened in other places, especially in Eastern Europe, in the early 90s, or late 80s with the fall of Berlin Wall and all that. There was some tendency to believe that this would be something akin to that, or at least to democratization processes that occurred in the 80s in East Asia, in Latin America. And I think this illusion was based on a misunderstanding of the deep roots of that upheaval, this big uprising, and it spread to the whole region actually as we saw at the point. And also probably a lack of understanding of the kind of regimes you have in the region, and the fact that when the people want to overthrow the regime, there is not a nizam, the famous slogan of those uprising, while changing the regime or the system, which is another possible translation of the term, nizam, I mean, is a daunting task when you are facing such repressive machines, and repressive deprived of, I would say any moral sense, that is, you know, the region has seen a lot of massacres in various countries. And therefore, the issue was definitely going to be much tougher and more difficult than what people believed in 2011. Add to that that the key, the core issue was not what the media believed it to be that is just a matter of democratization, although of course democracy and freedom were very central. There is no dispute about that, but they were not the most fundamental cause of the uprising, which was rather social and economic and structural, and the structure there therefore is not only the shape of the regime, whether as a dictatorial, authoritarian or whatever, but also the whole social nature of such states and the whole conditions that created that type of capitalism based on cronism, and such features, which resulted in the fact that that part of the world had the lowest rates of growth among African and Asian regions, and that translated in the highest rates of youth unemployment in the world for many years before 2011, and these rates were actually only increasing. And there was a gap between the rates of youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa and those of the rest of the world, a very significant gap. So these were the core reason of the explosion and once one understood that one could only expect that this would be a very long historical process. I use that formula from the beginning the long term revolutionary process that it is that is we have to understand it in terms of process not in terms of a moment in history and that's it. It's a process that will take very long time probably saying maybe decades when we have already we have already one decade of time and then with there will be more. So what what we can say is that that was the beginning of a process that involves inevitably ups and downs, up surges and backlashes, revolutionary moment and counter revolutionary moment. That is the way historical revolutionary processes go. And that's what we had and two years after 2013. That is, I mean, that can be confirmed even with the, with a map or a graph of the intensity of the movements but 2013 is a sharp drop. It's a turning point, turning point from the first, let's say revolutionary phase to a counter revolutionary phase that was that I mean was a signal by the Iran Iran's intervention in Syria to rescue the regime and therefore the counter offensive of the Syrian regime and the coup, the military coup in July 2013 in Egypt that was followed by also the return of old regime men in Tunisia to government. And in the in the year after civil wars in Libya and Yemen, involving partisans of the old regimes and, you know, and the opposition so at the generation if you want, and a violent one of of the, the, the, what happened in the first phase. And then at that point, indeed, as you're saying, you had a lot of gloomy depiction, and, and you know, ironic comments on the Arab winter, autumn, you name it. And we had a return come back with a revenge of the Orientalist trope that Oh, this part of the world, you know, because of their culture. Democracy is not in their DNA, you know, they so they are addicted to despotism. That's part of their culture. This kind of Orientalist perspective that was shaken in 2011, when you had, you know, ingenious statements saying, Oh, after all, they are like the rest of us, you know, oh, after all they they they are also longing for democracy and freedom. And then, two years later, it was the setback into well, okay, I mean, the culture is prevailing again, which of course is a very silly way of looking at all that. So the, the, and, and then, you know, there was this tendency to bury the movement to to to proclaim that, okay, it failed, that that is the end of it. But again, when you understand the long term perspective, the historical perspective, you understand that that I mean this counter-reversal phase will be followed by new upsurges. And indeed, even during that phase, you, you, I mean, the social protest carry carried on developing at a massive scale in several countries of the region, Morocco, in Sudan, in Tunisia itself, actually, we had a number of social movements developing during those years. Until we reached a new threshold or a new phase, in the year 2018, first we had a large popular movement in Jordan, which was not as radical as radical as what we had in 2011 in the sense that for including I would say for the, for the risk of saying it in a country like Jordan or any monarchy in the region to the risk of calling for the overthrow of the monarchy is terrible. So it was a movement limited to, to, to, to targeting the government and it succeeded in, in that, but then by the end of that year, December 2018, exactly eight years after it all began in Tunisia in December 2010, it began again in Sudan this time, you had a major uprising starting in Sudan in December 2018. And in February 2019, it was followed by an uprising in Nigeria, a huge popular movement. In October of the same year, Iraq, and then Lebanon. Okay, so that made it for countries and you started having in the media game, the second Arab spring that formula emerge in the media. So, so already we had a second Arab spring if you want I could say in reply in response to your initial question that we had already to spring, even though that the second didn't have the same scope as the first. But still you have four countries. We had six in 2011 it was more dramatic in 2011, but it was no less important in 2019. And if you think of it, that means that until now, 10 countries, 10 countries, it's it's, it's absolutely amazing. And most of the world has have gone into uprising mode, major uprising mode and not counting all the other countries, or most of the other countries where you had very important upsurges in the social protest. Speaking of full uprisings, we have 10 countries out of, of, of, I mean, in terms of state you have something like 20 states in the in the region. There are 20 states and actually, you should, one should count out of these 20 states countries and states like the United Arab Emirates or Qatar with very artificial condition where only 10% of the population are citizens, right. And so you can't expect anything there. So that means that over the rest of countries, the majority of the states of the region have until now witnessed major uprisings. And in terms of population, the large majority of the population region because you have the largest country, I mean, in terms of population, Egypt has been involved. Algeria, one of the largest countries have been involved. So it's, it's Syria. Iraq, I mean, we are speaking of, of, of many of the key countries of the region. So definitely, it's far from over. And I would say that what happened to this last wave is different than to from what happened to the first, the first one ended in defeat and counterrevolution backlash. The second one was frozen, if you could say by COVID. The pandemic is what blocked this unfolding of movements in the four countries. Now, with the effects, the political effects, let's say, of the pandemic, starting to fade away, we are seeing a resumption of the movement in Algeria very recently, the movement that had been suspended for a year is resuming. In Sudan, it never actually really stopped. So, but there have been demonstrations, there have been tensions, a lot of tensions in the country and these are going to increase. So, and Lebanon because of the catastrophe is seeing today a new explosion, albeit under much, let's say, much, much worse conditions than what existed in 2019. And so overall, there has been a suspension, not an attermination with with COVID. And, and I will end with this. COVID itself, the economic crisis created by COVID is only worsening the deep roots, the deep causes of the major upheaval. And therefore, that that is a further reason to assert very categorically that we, I mean, this is far from being the end of it. Actually, we are still in a, in some, in some way we are still in an initial phase of this long of this transformation that is absolutely indispensable in this part of the world, and short of which there won't be any new stabilization under this particular regime. That is something that is extremely unlikely. And therefore, the region is entered now 10 years into a long protracted period of instability and all sorts of agitation. Thank you. I remember interviewing you for our channel, Middle East channel of culture and communication which I edit, and we did a special issue on the ad-abab pricing, and I remember you saying then, this is a long process, a longer duration process, so it's kind of almost repetitive if one can use that term. But in terms. I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I think it's just a matter of understanding the deep, because when when you use such terms that would refer to something where you have to guess, you know, I don't think it was a matter of guessing. It's a matter of understanding the what the problem is when you have the correct diagnosis, then the prognosis follows and and and is correct. That is, given the nature of the crisis, this is something that can be sold quickly and rapidly and smoothly. It will be a very long process and unfortunately also one with a lot of violence. And of course we, you know, there are popular mobilizations in Iraq that have been going on for quite a long time as well. Again, you know, trying to ask for various demands, but but this leads me to kind of asking whether these, you know, in a sense, what are the aims? It seems like the aims of these new popular mobilizations are more, you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, are more around economic and social equality, which you mentioned in your first book on the advertising. So, presumably, these are the key concerns and and there are concerns around human rights and around freedom of expression, etc. But it seems to me like, particularly in the case of Lebanon, social and economic inequalities that have been endemic for and corruption that have been endemic for a long time. And now being, you know, people are demanding a way of dealing with them. I mean, I think from the start you have had a variety of, let's say, focuses in the movements, depending on the countries. And that, of course, reflects the nature of the political regime, the nature of the conditions in the country. That is, in some countries the movement started on social issues, or actually in Tunisia. That was the beginning was on the, let's say, the whole period preceding the uprising in Tunisia had seen a rise in social struggles and also some political struggles to be sure. But when it exploded and became a massive nationwide or statewide popular movement, it inevitably became, of course, political and a shabby leader's cotton is on, it became a matter of wanting to change the system or the regime. I mean, when we look at the second wave, we can see also that in Sudan it was triggered by the economic issue with the implementation of IMF inspired measures by the dictatorial government of Hamar al-Bashir. We see that in Lebanon also it was triggered by an economic issue and the attempt of the government to impose attacks on voice over internet communications. In Iraq it was a lot of grievance on social economic but also political issues. So, I mean, whereas in Algeria it was directly on a political issue that is the trigger was not economic, the trigger was political that is the attempt of the military to renew the for the fifth time, the presidential mandate of Abdul Aziz Bouteflika. And that's what let people to pour into the streets. So, the trigger is different. It can be social, it can be economic, it can be very directly political. But the key point is that the underlying cause of all that is the social economic blockage of the region. And of course, this social economic blockage create a lot of resentment against the whole system. I mean, when you have we have the region has had dictator popular dictatorships, one should say, for instance in the 60s. I mean, Nasser's Egypt was certainly not a democratic state that was definitely also a military police kind of dictatorship, but it was undeniably popular, because it was because of its social economic achievements, the major social economic reforms and also the national the confrontation with Israel with with Western powers with the United States all that made the regime undeniably popular. So, so even the protests against dictatorships is something that is related to social economic conditions, which create this content. They can be in the of also of different orientation. Sometimes, you may have protests against dictatorships out of of. I mean, as a result of the development of a country, the modernization of a country, the development of, of, let's say some kind of modern middle class and the rest, the, the, the development in size of the working class. I mean, such democratization happening in countries like Brazil, or South Korea to just to name but to here. Yes. But what we have in the region is the other side is the other pipe is not democratize it not democratization process. There is a historical period of development and economic growth and modernization. No, what we had is is a blockage, and this blockage is what led to the explosion. In a sense, this is closer to what you had in Eastern Europe where you had also economic blockage within the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, except that there. The future of the regimes, we was very special. No property classes bureaucrats running, and those were not, or did not engage into any very violent confrontation with the mass movements, believing each one of them that they could recycle their own, know how in in a market economy. Whereas, in, in the part of the world we are discussing. You have not only property classes, as you may have elsewhere that is capitalist land owners, but, etc. But you have also a number of countries in the region, which in which the state itself is owned by family. The rule of the state itself and that's is not only the case of the monarchies, but also the, the so called the republican monarchies or monarchical republics that we had in the region like Syria, the Assad regime in Syria like the Qaddafi regime in Libya or the, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, even though that one was overthrown by the US state occupation in 2003. You know, when we were thinking about what, you know, one of the issues around the first wave, let us say, 2011 was the question of the surprise that people were very surprised that, or commentators were very surprised that popular mobilisations were so huge, and that they had happened in such conditions. At the moment when we are looking at the popular mobilisations and uprisings that are taking place in different parts of the Arab world, I myself as someone looking at, you know, the media space as a space where all these mobilisations are also taking place. It is really very difficult to come up with a consensus on what, you know, on the different triggers for these mobilisations. But I really appreciate your point around the fact that, well, it's not about one thing, but they're all linked to the question of socioeconomic positions and properties issues and issues related to who holds the power, you know, sort of these, these are family owned, you know, kind of regimes that have continued. But I want to ask another question, which is, in a sense, so for me, looking at the media, at the media scene, and it's very confusing. It's because you cannot concentrate on everything, because you have women taking part in different forms of popular mobilisations, young youth people. But the interesting thing is the multiplication and so many and numerous numbers of uprisings or maybe demands that are coming through social media, you know, in this new, in these continuous waves of uprisings. But I wanted to ask a question related to whether you think, or whether it is, you know, whether you think that these new popular mobilisations have learned some lessons from the first one. So is that any kind of change in the ways they are, or in the ways that they are organising or in the ways that they are, you know, trying to respond to power in different ways? Oh, I mean, yeah, absolutely. This is a very important issue that you're raising. Well, you started speaking of media. I don't know if at that level there is much difference. I would presume that there is not much difference in the sense that there hasn't been a technological change. Maybe some applications are more used today than they were in 2011. That may very well be the case. I presume the WhatsApp, for instance, like that, just to give an example. But other than that, already in 2011 we were in this era of the new information and communication technology. And that was very much used to the point that it was described that, well, that was exaggerated, but not devoid of any truth. It was described as a Facebook revolution that we all remember. Right, so maybe at this level there hasn't been much change, but the differences between 2019 and 2011 are quite visible. There are a number of them. There are the political differences, which are a result of the fact that historical processes of revolution are in terms of experience, in terms of knowledge, are cumulative. That is, they are learning curves. So people don't repeat the same mistakes if they have been made just a few years before. They have them in memory, in the historical memory. And for instance, in this case probably the most blatant difference is the way the people behave towards the military in Sudan and in Algeria compared to Egypt in 2011 and 2013. So whereas in Egypt, the popular movement had a lot of illusions about the military, both in 2011 and then in 2013, we see that in Sudan and Algeria, these illusions were not repeated. And these three countries together represent the three countries where the armed forces are the central institution in the political system. This is the peculiarity of the three countries in the region, and we see how strikingly similar the scenario has been in each of them, where the armed forces end up removing the president. The armed forces removed Mubarak, and then Mursi, 2011, 2013, and the armed forces removed Al-Bashir and removed Bouteflika. Also in Sudan and Algeria, or Algeria and Sudan, chronologically. So, but the popular movement had a very different reaction, which was, you know, full defiance and against the military, not at all cheering up for the military for what they've done and you know, and praising them, because they removed the president as the military expected. I'm sure in both Sudan and Algeria, they expected to behave for what they've done, and what they found is a popular movement saying, well, that's one step forward, but what we want is a civilian democracy and the military out of politics. And that's a very important difference, and here I think there is the learning curve is quite clear that because people saw what Egypt had become in 2014, 15, 16, when in 2016 the CC regime started the most radical implementation of the IMF advocated the reforms, which led to a huge rise in the cost of living and the cost of food and the rest. I mean, it had devastating effect, and also the devaluation of the currency, really devastating effect on the population, but that you had this very repressive regime, which actually is much more repressive than what the Mubarak regime was. So people understood that lesson in both Sudan and Algeria and are carrying on the struggle, never stopped it for one thing, kept demanding a civilian government. We have also a difference, I would say, in the political configuration. And that's here in that regard, it's also, I mean it's a result also of let's say historical changes, but also of the specific kind of situation that you have in at least three, but actually in the four countries in the sense that the Islamic fundamentalist forces, the Muslim Brotherhood and the like, that managed to jump on the wagon, the bandwagon in 2011 to hijack the movement and steer it in their own preferred direction, because they were by far the most organized, the most important component of the opposition, and they had television backing with Al Jazeera, this is an issue that you know better than I know, that's your field. And we know how much this is important in politics, of course, it's hugely important, even if you have now internet and the rest, and money, of course, funding and all that. And also Turkey jumped in and also supporting them. So they managed with all the support and all that, they managed to come to the, to get hold of the helm, you know, to be at the wheel of the first phase. But then they suffered very heavy defeat in Egypt with the coup in Indonesia where it wasn't fortunately, it wasn't, it was much smoother but they were politically defeated. And then in Libya and Yemen where the governments in which they participated were faced civil war and, you know, and other complications. So that was the first phase now in the first in the same way, we see a very different picture, because, as I said also of the nature of the governments Sudan's military dictatorship, unlike the one in Egypt has been very closely work collaborating with the Islamic fundamentalist. Now it's true that even in Egypt and people forget that the Muslim Brotherhood have been very severely suppressed, but the Salafis are there and our supporters of the regime of season. Now in, in Sudan, the whole spectrum of Islamic fundamentalist forces was supporting the regime was involved in the regime. And therefore, they were not in the popular movement. And there was no way they could, they could steal that movement or hijack that was strictly impossible. The movement is very much against them to that's for Sudan. In Nigeria, the, the, you have had 10 years of terrible civil war in the 90s with extremist fraction of Islamic fundamentalist forces. And we're going into details because there were there are huge suspicion about the role of the military intelligence itself in in in creating maybe that situation but never the key point is that it discredited these forces and then the more moderate, which are to the Muslim Brotherhood, actually, where participants in the government of what they think they, they, they participated at, I mean, intermittently in the government. So they were not in a position to, to, to be, you know, here again in the, in the mass movement in even less to, to, to, to, to ambition to, to, to, to steer it to hijack it or whatever. And then if you look at Iraq and Lebanon. Well, here we, again, we have governments in which Islamic fundamentalist forces are the, the, the, actually the, the key force. In Hezbollah in Lebanon, and several organizations, armed groups in Iraq that have in common, they're very close relations to Iran to the Iranian regime. And these are the key forces in government in both countries and that's why the pricings in these countries, where, against these forces, as well as the rest. And these forces took part or played a key role in trying to repress the appraisals more even than the official repressive forces of the government. So, so this is another difference major difference. And finally, last but not least, you have seen a more important role of women in this second wave. Sudan, especially where the women were even a majority in the popular movement, even though when it came to representation in, in governing bodies and the rest. This was not reflected and the feminist very rightly protested against the situation, but still the role of women has been very important we have seen an important role of feminist organization in Tunisia in 2011. We have seen an important role of participation of women even in Yemen 2011, but in 2019 that was even bigger in Algeria also in Lebanon, the women were more visible at the forefront of the uprising than men. And that even influence Iraq, which traditionally has been a country where the condition of women was much more difficult, but this led to an increased participation of young women student in the movement so this is also a difference so we see differences there are differences. And I would say that the three differences that I mentioned are steps forward, right, where we still have the big problem in the region is in terms of the organization of the popular movement around the kind of aspirations that are shared and common to all these movements. And in that regard, I see one exception, which is Sudan, which has been until now in all the 10 appraisings that we have seen in the region. The most advanced in terms of organizational structures is Sudan, where the movement is led by two kind of organizations, one which has the role of representing the movement or leading official movement and which is, well, it was something called the professional association, but it now involves much more than the professionals to involves labor unions of all kinds. It has become a leadership of the working movement, the labor movement, the popular movement, all this together. And we have a grassroots organization of the youth, called the resistant committees which is completely impressive, which uses a lot the media by the way. It uses very much, it uses very much in their expression, their communicates and all that are not website are Facebook pages, right, and they post their, their position and you have several such resistance committees involving hundreds of participants each one and you have hundreds of such committees involving hundreds so that gives you an idea of the very big size of that. There is no central leadership, they are, and that is a general, I would say feature of the new generation, not only in the region, but even globally, there is some strong reservation towards anything like centralism party leadership and something like that. And this is understandable given the very poor balance sheet of the 20th century forms of organization. And so, but, but nevertheless thanks to these ways of communication, they managed to coordinate their positions in an impressive. Very advanced, we haven't seen anything like this in the region in Syria at the very beginning you had the local coordination committees, which approach that kind of thing but due to the very repressive conditions from the start. They were nowhere near the size of what we have today in Sudan. So that's a very interesting development. But here, that points to a key problem, a key issue for the future of this long term revolutionary process, the condition without which this won't lead to any positive outcome, which is this ability to find ways to have organization and representations that have the legitimacy of real popular support and consent that is very crucial. I think there's a very interesting, I have one of my students who's shooting this program. Moving on, I'm really pleased that you mentioned the woman one one issue around woman in Iraq at the mobilization of the, you know, what is called digital harassment. And that, you know, that is the problem of kind of opening, the open media spaces is that they are threatened. And just to make I've asked that some of them are unable to go out for this. But I want to have a last question for the open session, which is in relation to the apparent kind of. largely indifferent international community, or attention by what is happening in to what is happening in the region. So we don't see, we, you know, we don't see a lot of engagement with that so perhaps you know if you could comment on that before I take questions from the audience. To be frank, I'm not sure. It is, it was the case because if you remember 2019. There has been a lot of attention actually. And most of the global media started speaking of the global revolt. Because the events in the Arab, or the Middle East and North Africa coincided with other upsurges of social protest from Latin America, Chile, Ecuador and other countries to Hong Kong. You know, through the, the Europe, the gilet jaune in France, major movement. And that's what we had in Mina. Iran had also important upsurges. So this look very much like a global, you know, wave of protest. The local, the second wave of the long term process in the region was or happened to to to to to partake. So no, I think that there was quite a lot of attention paid actually. Well, of course it's proportional to countries. What it is when you have Egypt and Tahrir Square, the attention of the world is different from what you have in when it is in Tunisia, or country like Lebanon. And yet, there has been quite quite that I mean a lot of attention about Algeria, for instance, then it depends on the country. In French speaking countries, France, Belgium, the rest attention on what was going on in Algeria was higher than Britain, or, or even more so the United States, but still that was also in the news so we can't say. No, I don't think that these mean that the movements were ignored. Because I think, I mean this this part of the world. Understandably for everyone is such a strategic and important. And, and you have so many foreign powers and that's, I mean related to what to do the same reason, you have so many foreign powers interfering here that that there is, there is quite a lot of attention. That's fantastic. I, if it's okay to stop taking questions from the audience is that you're absolutely is post your questions in the question and answer. You know, kind of. So one question for you the future prospects for Libya. Oh, the future prospects for Libya. Well, I would reply to that first by by trying to to sketch very briefly how I see things that things developed in Libya. Just a reminder. We've had a popular uprising, and bolded by the Tunisian and Egyptian examples. You know, to both countries are adjacent to Libya so so I mean, Libya could only be taken into the surprising mode that the two neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia had gone through. And, and of course, different. I mean, with the difference in the nature of the regime which is one, you know, a regime family owned very centralized dictatorship, very peculiar also kind of autocracy with the family control of the and tribal control of the armed forces and the rest. The uprising was met with violence very quickly and all that. And then that led to foreign intervention in an attempt to, or the, with the proclaimed desire to prevent the massacre that was missed by Kedafi to Ben-Razi the second city of the country in the east of the country. But then this intervention turned into an attempt at controlling the move with intensive efforts to steer it politically, which failed completely when it, it, the, the uprising occurred in the capital city itself and led to the collapse of the whole state. So the result was that Libya is the only country in the region where the people really overthrew the regime in the deepest sense of the regime that's the whole state collapsed. But then that led into a, you know, an anarchic situation with no, no real center of power but multiple groups and the rest and nevertheless the year 2012. So real elections with a high participation under conditions of real freedom of people to participate or not. And that was the moment, a democratic moment, but it did not last for the reasons mentioned that you had various groupings of forces and then the political clash became a military one and that the country fell into a war, even though it's a low intensity war if we compare it to Syria or Yemen, where there you have much more tragic wars, even for demographic reasons in Libya it's much less you know that it's a country with very large stretches of in uninhabited land between the cities and all that. So, and it led to a division between one side represented by Haftar involving forces that were part of the previous regime involving also Salafist by the way, and backed by the CC regime in Egypt by the UAE by Russia. Through so called mercenaries who are actually how to say semi-official troops of the Russian government in fact. So this, these forces are on the side and France shipped in also in with some hesitation in supporting Haftar. On the other side you had a coalition of forces with the Muslim Brotherhood at the center backed by Qatar and Turkey. And you have this international record internationally recognized government with UN attempts at, you know, achieving some kind of compromise. And I would say that in the region. The worst scenario in the region are those clashes between Islamic fundamentalist forces and old regime forces, because they can they become also very bloody as we see in Syria, etc. And, and that's not going to advance the popular the progressive popular movement. So, I mean, it's better for everyone if they can reach some kind of coalition agreement to stop wars. That's already something, and therefore recreate conditions under which a popular movement can can progress. So now there's a new attempt at achieving this kind of compromise, which won't solve any of the economic social problems and all that in the country but at least if it stops the war and leads to two conditions under which social struggles could develop that that would be that would be a positive outcome in my view. That's what I can say. Now, what will happen. It's everybody's guess you know it's just impossible when you have such a number of forces, such a number of foreign sponsors. These foreign sponsors is likely to change their positions depending on their, the, the, the, the, the connections between them. And sometimes you have you know a change of president in the United States can change completely the condition. You have so many changing factors in the equation that any attempt at predicting an outcome anywhere is doomed to fail. And if, if, if ever a prediction proves right, it's more like you know the, the, the clock that is not working but which is twice a day gives the right time twice a day because because it's so that's that's exactly the point. And that's what I can say about Libya. And everything will will, I think will. Or it depends on on all these, these conditions that I mentioned. So so much that no prediction is possible, except that for the whole region. There is no real stability inside that is even if they get compromised and all that that won't solve the social problem and then you will have a continuous social protest as you can see today if you look at Syria. Even in the, although the regime appears as having won the battle except for the region of Idlib. But now you see in the areas controlled by the regime like suede and the rest we have seen a flare up of social protest. It's, it's, it's, it will carry on. Thank you. And this seems to answer questions because there's a few questions around for an intervention and questions around, you know, do, but perhaps you could speak a bit more around the situation in Lebanon. And a couple of questions wanted to say, what are your reflections on Lebanon currently and whether you see there is some new way that the protesters or the people engaged in the popular mobilizations perhaps they are moving or understanding in a different way and responding to it in a different way. So I wonder whether you could comment on the Lebanese situation. Yeah. Well, I'm afraid I don't have any optimistic or, you know, positive appraiser assessment of what's going on now. There was a huge, hugely important moment in 2019 in October 2019 that the initial appraiser, which was amazing in managing to cross to develop across sectarian cleavages in the, and regional cleavages in the country and encompassing practically all parts of the country, and all, and people of all sects. And that was also, I mean, the, the, the, the condition for that was also that the movement was against members of the ruling class of whatever whichever sect they you find in the country, all of them means all of them was the, the, the central slogan of that appraising moment, right. However, there is a much less homogeneity or agreement in the movement in Lebanon on what people are standing for, then on what people are standing against. All of them, all of them means all of them. But when it comes to the conception of what should be replacing them here you have very different views, because the movement is very heterogeneous, socially, class wise if you think about it in any way, you know, politically, ideologically, in any sense. And so it, there were attempts at creating structures and all that, but they were not successful, and therefore, that facilitated the role of the various sectarian constituents of the ruling class to, we, I mean, to take back control, at least in part of their constituencies. And so that that's, that's one point and there has also been a sense of despair or in the face of me when you see that one of the key stumbling block is represented by Hasballah which is an armed force which is stronger than the government and can be more repressive than the official government. And that is also a major, major concern. However, and at least I want to end on this with with some more positive comments. In the very recent weeks we have seen the development of a very promising student movement across universities, private universities and then moving to the public universities. The name is the, the secular clubs. I mean, in the, in the Lebanese context that means rejection of sectarianism, basically. And, and they have really progressive aspirations they're expressing them we have been some political expression of that. There have been some movements that started building up in, in 2019, like the happy movement of that kind, young involving essentially young people with the progressive aspirations. So there are attempts, they are promising, but for the time being for the, for the wave if you want that started in 2019. You can see that leading to in itself to any change the change in Lebanon for now is depends here more than Libya. I would say, on international players, you know, basically, the Iran US relation, the state of the relation between Washington and Tehran is what has the. What has the most important consequences on the situation in Lebanon. Thank you. So there's a question around. There's a question saying that the first phase of the Arab uprising, where perhaps the same sometimes an Arabism. And that was why that there was this idea of a pan Arab movement. And then a related question whether this is also, you know, coming through in the current way sport in the second. So, question related to pan Arab identity or pan Arabism. No, I mean, pan Arabism in in Arabic. It's Arab nationalism. I think it is an ideology that has made its time it's, you know, it, it, it, it lost it completely lost impetus in the, in the 70s. And when the regime that resulted from this shifted to the right. All of them, basically, through the 70s and 80s all of them shifted to the right. And so, and since all these regimes had in common their dictatorial character. I mean, this, this legacy has become very much discredited. And, and no, it didn't play any, any significant role. I mean, you had Nasserist here and there. But this identity if you take Egypt, for instance, there was a very, very significant and I mean vote in 2012 for a candidate that is Nasserist. But that was not because of the pan Arab is the side of his ideologies was more the nostalgia of what Egypt was under Nasser, the nostalgia of the social economic conditions under Nasser. The nostalgia of the national dignity of the of Egypt and its role, not only in the region but worldwide as a leader of the non-aligned movement and the rest. So this is what plays more in that case it's not the, the pan arabist idea it's in. Now, the fact that we are speaking of movement that is developing in Arabic speaking countries and all of that that led to renewed awareness of the belonging to a geopolitical culture and also, and for some they would call that national it's no time and space here for for such debates. But the key point is that, yes, I mean in the sense of the conscience of a belonging to a region with a lot of things in common is there has been enhanced with what what we're seeing that doesn't mean that there is any role for pan Arabism in that except very marginal groups here and there participating. Now, for the region if one has to think of, of unity for the future that would be more in, in the sense of what you have in the European Union, you know, that is a confederal kind of organization of the states of the region, and any of the, all the dreams of, of the, the unification a la Bismarck or Victor Emmanuel or I mean like the unification of Germany or, or Italy, and that won't happen. And what we may see are more democratic forms that would be for the future but for that before that you need a positive outcome for what is going on into a real democratization of the whole region to have therefore the possibility of a really democratic state. There's a good question about Sudan, asking whether you could tell us more about the labor movement in in in the Sudanese complex and whether this new, you know, movement. I think you mentioned it's, it's a professionals, but does it is the established labor force, or is it union centered is the other unions involved in it for other parties involved in this organization. I'll be brief and refer you to the article I wrote for Le Monde Diplomatique which is in open access in English on Sudan. That was in June, maybe last year, 2020. May or June the country member something like that I visited, I went on a can say field work visit to Sudan in February. Last year, and yes, and so the, I mean the, the labor unions, like in other dictatorial countries in the region were under state control. But what you had is a movement that was created was built underground by started by professional associations involving. I don't know, doctors, journalists, veterineries, all sorts of professional association and also teachers, whether the teachers are professionals that's debatable, especially when you, when you, I mean, you go beyond the, I mean, you don't only consider university or higher education teachers but more basic education. So anyway, you had the movement they organize underground, and when the time came, they in December 2018 they came to the fore and they became the organizing body, and also the spokes. They spoke persons of the whole movement and their website and all that their Facebook their social media became the center the focus of what was happening. And with the with the unfolding of the uprising, the fall of the dictators, you have a number of new unions being created the labor movement was resuscitated and new forms and dependent forms. There was an adoption of a new labor law union law in the country, which had been the center of a debate over the period since the uprising. So, so now the, what is called the Sudanese professional association is in fact the, the epicenter of the whole labor working people movement in the country. And, and yeah, that's what we can say about it. But this article I mentioned is available easily. It's easy to find it. So, a couple of questions around the persistence of authoritarianism in the region. And a question on what you think about Russia's law going forward for right now. Right authoritarianism. I mean, you know to overthrow authoritarianism you need an organized civil society. Let's put it in those terms, that is a popular movement and all that able to impose democracy. There is one country of the first wave where this existed and that was Tunisia with the, which had this particularity of being the only country in the region at that time, which had a powerful organized labor movement legal. That is not an underground one. And at the same time autonomous towards the government, especially at the levels of the rank and file and intermediary level, but even not all its leadership was under state control. And this organization is actually the crucial reason that explains why it started. I mean, in Tunisia that is why Tunisia was the first country to get rid of its head of state. That's thanks to the role that this organization played in transforming what was a local protest into a national uprising. It had a key role in that regard. And their existence is the key reason why, of all the six uprisings and other movements that we had 2011, the only one that led to real democratization is Tunisia. Right. And we can say today Tunisia is the most democratic state in the region. It's a perfect democracy far from it, but compared to all the rest is definitely the most democratic. The one in which you don't know in advance the result of elections and elections are really free and they bring a lot of surprises. And this has been there for, for, for 10 years. It's not that you have two years and then it's over. So that's the key point. Now Sudan is another country where this could be possible, except that they are facing a much tougher obstacle than Tunisia. Tunisia for historical reason, never had a strong military. The army was never central in Tunisian politics. In Sudan, that has been for the last decades, you've had military dictatorships and the military are entrenched in the government in power in the control of all that and they have a huge privileges that they need to, that they want to serve, like in Egypt, like in Nigeria. So it's much tougher, but so the struggle will carry on. And for the rest, that's the point that is, again, we get back to what I said the condition for a positive outcome of all this historical process is the power of organization of the popular movement. That's what will be decisive at the end of the day. And I think with this you answered the question by Helen where she was asking about, you know, the need for organization. One question, what about prospects for Kuwait and Yemen, you know, big questions, and I don't know whether you want to answer them. And again, because you've got the Lebanese elections coming, you know, those two questions around Lebanon, Lebanese elections in 2022, what kind of opportunities would these bring or maybe not opportunities in many ways. Yeah, well, you know, any question about prospects for the MENA region should be solved by the local well known means to find out about prospects, which is a coffee, you know, you turn the top of coffee, and then you read you read in it the future. But to be frank, because anyone pretending that they can predict the future would be, you know, I mean, that's a pretense that doesn't make any sense for the reasons I explained there are too many factors involved. It's not a simple equation where you can find the unknowns very, I mean, relatively easily here. No, they are changing. It's an equation was changing factors, and they change for so many reasons, global local regional everything. So it's not possible to predict. And the only thing, as I said, the only safe prediction one can do for the whole region is the fact that what start in 2011, this destabilization of the region will carry on for very long. That's for sure. No stability in any foreseeable future. Right. That's for sure. That's the only thing. Aside from that, no one can take it, right. Except maybe for even for the very short term, it's very difficult to make predictions actually in the region because it's so much changing so many states involved and the rest. Lebanese elections. I don't know if there will be elections. And I mean, many Lebanese are wondering if there will still be 11 on 22. I mean, it's really tragic what you want to do. The just to give you an example, an indicator before the crisis in 2019, the dollar was exchanged for 1500 liras. Okay. Now it has done over 15,000. So from 2019 to now, it has lost 90% more of its value. It's collapsing. And except for those who have dollars and fresh dollars as they call them in Lebanon that is will get their dollars from abroad. And for the rest, it's, it's, I mean, a completely unbearable situation. It's absolutely unbearable. And so it's, it's, I mean, to think of elections and all that would, would, would mean that you have had some kind of stabilization of some kind of of the economy crisis and the rest. I mean, no one can predict that again. It's the same issue. As I explained, it depends on international factors more than it depends on what is going on in Lebanon itself. And therefore, who knows what will happen from now until 2022. But I think we should end here. We're coming to the end of time that were a few other questions, but they kind of repeating repeating the other ones. And what I wanted to say here is obviously, you know, there are all these external factors, but we also have the pandemic factor as well, which is, you know, kind of brings its own specificities for the country, you know, for the globe in the region, but also for the region. But thank you all for all your questions and thank you to the bear because very stimulating discussion as always with you. And yeah, there was a question about Al Jazeera and so on. There's been a lot of stuff written about Al Jazeera's role in the appraisings. And there's a question about Iranian movement. And again, there's, if you look up the Middle East general of culture and communication, the, you know, there is a discussion around the movement. And the appraisings, we want to look at that. But obviously, you know, in terms of the talk, I think we've had a very rich discussion. Thank you all for coming. And have a good evening. Thank you very much and thank you to a key. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.