 Hello, good afternoon everybody. I'm Susan Collins, the Joan and Sanford Wildein here at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and I am delighted to welcome all of you here this afternoon on behalf of the Ford School community. We are very honored today to be joined by a man who for so many people became the single essential source of information over the past months as the dramatic transformational world changing events happened in the Arab Spring. We, in a few moments, I will be introducing our speaker, Sheikh Sultan al-Qasemi. But before I do that, I would like to tell you a little bit about the origins of this lecture series which is something that the school has been very, very proud to host. This, as you know, is the Josh Rosenthal lecture. Josh Rosenthal was a graduate of the University of Michigan in 1979 and he went on to earn a master's degree in public policy from Princeton University. His deep interest in policy analysis and international affairs led him to work in the field of international finance and he was in the World Trade Towers on September 11th of 2001 and Josh died in that attack. His mother, Marilyn Rosenthal, was a longtime faculty member here at the University of Michigan and she was determined to create a positive meaning from what had happened on 9-11 and her intent was to help fulfill her son's early optimism about the world and the role that mutual understanding, dialogue, and analysis play in improving communities both here in the United States and around the world. Marilyn and a number of others worked to establish the Josh Rosenthal Education Fund which has enabled the Ford School to bring leading public figures to Ann Arbor each September to share their insights to foster dialogue and generate a greater understanding of the many ways in which the world has changed it since 9-11 and the many ways that we can continue to help to foster and encourage that change and are there members of the Rosenthal family who were able to join us here today? Welcome. It's wonderful to see you. We're delighted that you are able to be here. I know that Josh's sister, Helen Rosenthal, is watching on our live feed and I know that there are many others around the country who are doing so as well so we welcome her in that venue. I do want to make a very special thank you to the Rosenthal family for their support. We are very grateful to them for being able to continue the Josh Rosenthal lecture and this dialogue. Marilyn Rosenthal died in 2007 but I know that she would have been extremely pleased especially on the 10th anniversary of the events on 9-11 to welcome Sheikh Sultan here this year as our Rosenthal lecturer. Sheikh Sultan is a successful businessman and he is the founder and chairman of Bargeel Securities, a financial products company and the managing director of Al Saud Company Limited which specializes in equity markets, real estate and construction. He's a teacher as well, a non-resident fellow at the Dubai School of Government and a lecturer at the Dubai Men's College on Middle Eastern history and entrepreneurship but Sultan is perhaps best known internationally for his commentary, analysis and dissemination of social, political and economic news from the Middle East. He's a columnist at the national newspaper in Abu Dhabi and he co-hosts a weekly show on Dubai Eye Radio. His columns appear regularly in the National and Money Works and he's been published internationally in the Financial Times, The Daily Star in Lebanon, The Huffington Post and others. Over 78,000 follow his commentary on Twitter and that number exploded this past winter when during the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt his nearly instantaneous translations of Arab language news were seized on by English-speaking journalists and observers hungry to follow and understand the changes that were sweeping the region. We could not be more pleased this afternoon and honored to welcome Sheikh Sultan al-Qasemi to Ann Arbor and to the Ford School and I am delighted now to welcome him to the podium. Thank you. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I'm not tweeting, I'm just checking the time so that I don't take any of your time. First of all, I want to say that I'm very honored to be here amongst you, especially considering the circumstances and I am mindful that we are all able to be here as a result of a grant by the very generous family of Joshua Rosenthal who passed away as we heard 10 years ago this month. In fact, it's very fitting, I think, that we are speaking on this occasion because a lot of us have been affected by those horrible tragic events. We also heard that a few months ago the person who planned these horrific events was, you know, killed and in fact I had written a couple of articles about how he had died several times before he was killed. He had died in the streets of Cairo. He had died in the streets of Benghazi. He had died in the streets of Sana'a. He had died in Bahrain. He had died in Tunisia. He had died all over the Arab world where no one or a single one of the millions upon millions of Arab and Middle Eastern protesters even had a single decent word to say about that horrific terrorist. So the world has come full circle, I think, and we're ready to talk about the future. Now, I'm gonna talk to you about four issues, but before I do, let's look at the background of the term Arab Spring. What is the Arab Spring? A lot of people dispute this word. It's not popular at all among some circles. It's looked upon as being an orientalist word, a word that came from writers outside the Middle East region. And the origin of the word actually is by a French writer who didn't have a very good history. He was a Nazi collaborator, so probably try to avoid using anything he came up with. But the word, he traveled throughout the Arab world while the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and other countries were being formed and he came up with this phrase called Le Prentin Arab, or the Arab Spring. Until today, French journalists refer to the events of the Middle East as Le Prentin Arab as in the Arab Springs. So what's the deal with the Arab Revolutions? What's going on? What's the background? And where are we going from here? These are things that we'll talk about in the next hour or so. There were several studies written about why the Arab Spring happened. There was a series of studies authored by a wonderful lady who called the Arab Human Development Report in which that talked about a human rights deficit, a freedom deficit, economic growth that failed, women's rights deficit, democracy deficit. So all these factors were there. In fact, the Arab Spring should have happened a decade ago, two decades ago, maybe decades before 2011. There was a study that found that the economies of the Arab world actually shrank over the past few decades. Even the Gulf States, there was a negative growth of 2.8%, there's a word I never heard of before called redevelopment. So in fact, we were regressing in the last 60 years in the Arab world and there was all sorts of reasons that dictators would use, all sorts of excuses. But ultimately, it was the denial of human rights. It was the denial of the citizens' rights that led to the Arab Awakening. Two issues, though, that talked about a lot, which is the role of social media. This is something that I think I'll spend some minutes on. There was two events that took place in 2010 before the Arab Spring that really set the real emotion for the events of 2011. One is more famous than the other. There was the case of the young Tunisian vegetable seller who was in a small town that I had never heard of called Sidi Bouzid and he was unemployed and he had his vegetable cart that he would wheel into the square and he was trying to sell vegetables. So a police officer comes and tells him off, tells him you can't sell, here, go back. This is no place for you. He goes back and he sets himself alight. And even in the repressive regime of Ben Ali, in which the internet had a police officer known as Ammar 404 who would stop you from surfing any websites, even in that repressive environment, news of this young man spread like wildfire across the blogosphere and the internet to the extent that the tightly controlled newspapers actually reported on the incident, the president, former dictator, went to visit him and on June 4th that young man passed away, Ahmed Bouazizi, and within six days, the dictator was ousted. Another event that also played a big role is, and this is where social media comes in, is the killing of a young Egyptian called Khaled Saeed. Khaled Saeed was a 24 year old. They were both 24, 25 years old, young kids. So Khaled Saeed was killed by two police officers. He was an IT engineer and he saw them exchanging drugs in Egypt, in this neighborhood called Sidi Gabar, in Alexandria. So he filmed them and they saw him, they followed him and they dragged him out of the internet cafe, we call it internet cafe back there, and they beat him to a pulp and then they didn't care about him, they just wanted to take the video footage and photos of him went viral on the internet. These police officers were sentenced to four days and that was it for beating a young man up. So what happened was young Egyptians started a Facebook page called We Are All Khaled Saeed and it got thousands upon thousands of members on that Facebook page. And in order for them to identify each other, reach out to each other, social media was the only medium. And so what they decided to do was they decided to dress in black and go and stand on the streets of Alexandria, on the Cornish, carrying, some of them carrying their Bibles, some of them carrying their Korans, some of them just dressed in black, standing next to each other, but leaving a few yards difference, maybe six, seven yards between them. And why did they do that? Because Egypt was and continues to be under state of emergency, which means that no more than four or five people can congregate together in a room without an official permit. So they were able to bypass this law that says that you can't be together by standing next to each other like this and then the next person a few yards away like that and complete silence for several hours a day over a period of a few days. And everybody knew why they were there. Everybody knew that these young men and women were unhappy about the death of this young gentleman. The administrator of that Facebook page, you might have heard of him, his name is Hwa El Ghuneem and he was the young Google executive who was detained for 11 days during the Egyptian uprising. So what happened on social media, these young men and women decided, and this was, by the way, many people don't know this, this was decided before the fall of the Egyptian dictator. They identified the 25th of January as the date where they want to go and protest. And that's why it's called the January 25th revolution. But why January 25th? Because that is the day, that day is police day in Egypt. That day, Egyptians celebrate police day because the police gave them a lot of calls to celebrate. So, but the reason, actually the reason why they chose January 25th was that was the day that most police officers were off duty. And they were able to march in the streets while the police officers were on holiday. And the beginning of the revolution, in the beginning of the uprising, people demanded three things. Say them in Arabic. Bread, freedom, and social justice. But by the 28th of January, there was a huge crackdown and several people, many people, dozens in fact, had died in the first few days. And then they started chanting, we want the end of the regime. Let's go back a few months. What's the deal with social media? What is social media in the Arab world? Is it really that important? Did it really play that decisive role? Now, the Arab world consists of about 300 million people. About 75% are under 29. So it's a very young region of the world. 20, 25% of them unemployed. Imagine that, that's about what? 40, 50 million unemployed individuals. Some countries don't consider women who are unemployed as unemployed, unfortunately. But the truth is the numbers were hovering between the 20s and 30s. So you had this young region using social media. Facebook, for instance, penetration. January 2010, you had 11.9 million users of Facebook in the Arab world. December 2010, 12 months later, you had 22 million users of social media of Facebook in the Arab world. Number of Twitter users. Several tens of thousands. By the end of the revolution, 5.5 to 6 million. Now, keep in mind, there are 300 million Arabs. So that means that it was a sort of an elite instrument. Not everybody had access to social media. Less than 10% of Arabs had access to social media. But what social media allowed them to do was to reach out to each other. It allowed them to identify each other. Find the common slogan. Find the date in which they would start to protest. It allowed them to unify the slogan. It allowed them to bypass police checkpoints. Where I came in is this. January 2010, 2011, I had a lot of free time on my hands. And the Tunisians had started to protest against their dictator. And 150,000 of them were on the street. And it was exciting. The whole world was watching what was happening in the tiny North African countries. That was really the country that I would have nominated to be the very last. Why? Because the United Nations had showered it with praise, human development, women empowerment, minority rights. The Jewish community had rights in Tunisia. All sorts of indicators, perhaps pointed to the fact that Tunisia was a stable country. Mind you, it had a lot of security as well. So there was no way that this would happen in Tunisia. Uprising happened. Muhammad Boazidi died. January 11th, Ben Ali flies to Saudi Arabia. Now the next day, I thought it was over. I was like, this is great. Wow, one dictator is gone. I mean, this is wonderful. Maybe next year or the year after. Or a decade later, another one will go. But within 48 hours, Muhammad Gaddafi comes out on TV and starts, he had an average, one of his shorter speeches, about three hours long. So he starts ranting. And he really looked upset. And Gaddafi was a huge supporter of Ben Ali. The Ben Ali palace was built by Gaddafi, his summer home. And they had tight relations. So Gaddafi starts saying things like, remember WikiLeaks had just released these documents about incriminating Ben Ali, saying that he's very unpopular. His family controls the economy. His wife controls, you know, is despised in the community. So Ben Ali comes out, starts saying things like, lecturing, starts saying things like, don't believe what you read in clinics. And I thought, what is clinics? And he didn't know what to call WikiLeaks. So he called it clinics. And then he starts saying, and don't believe what's on Bookface. I was like, what's Bookface? It's all new words. You know, I never heard of this stuff. So I was tweeting and tweeting and tweeting, a way of writing, translating what Gaddafi was saying. And it was insane. He was saying things like, you should be so lucky to have Ben Ali be your president. You should apologize to him. Ask for him to come back. And maybe he'll return and you should be so lucky if he does. And it was just hilarious. I was laughing and crying at the same time, tweeting about what this insane individual was saying. And this is where I think, where the tipping point for me was. I noticed that, I had what, 5,000 to 6,000 followers. I noticed that by the end of the next day, I had double or triple that number. People were saying, follow this guy who's translating what Gaddafi is saying now. It's hilarious. And yeah, so there was about a two and a half hour speech in which I was tweeting every 40 seconds. So you can imagine my thumbs were very, very sore by the end of that evening. So then, you know, Ben Ali departs January 25. So a good 10 days, two weeks between them, we had time to crack our knuckles and, you know, and the Egyptian revolution started. We didn't know the revolution. We thought it was just a protest on police day. And Mubarak shuts down the internet. Mubarak shuts down TV. Mubarak shuts down mobiles. Mubarak shuts down satellite channels. Al Jazeera was chased out of Nile Sat. You can't call internationally. You were completely disconnected. Now you do have countries that are not wired like North Korea, but to have a country that had a decent amount of 10 million, maybe social media users in Egypt, all of a sudden, none of them have access to information. However, there was one ISP left, Internet Service Provider, basically the company that provides internet services. One was called NoorNet and that company, or Noor DSL, now that company was catering to the banks and to the brokerage firms and the central bank. So they were separate from the other firms. So that company allowed a small number of Egyptians to access the internet. So what happened was, there were maybe several thousand of Egyptians who would tweet from Egypt or who would call or who would, who were able to stay in touch with the rest of the world. Only several thousand in the country of 80 million. And these were the lifeline of Egypt. These were really the brave men and women who kept Egypt in touch with the rest of the world. And so, so I was tweeting things like, Habib Ali, Habib Ali is who, he's the Interior Minister of Egypt, who was sentenced to 12 years on corruption a few months back. He's undergoing another trial now with Mubarak. So I was tweeting, I remember one day, it was constant, constant, 24 hours a day, three weeks I didn't go to work, I didn't do anything except watch Egypt. And I remember tweeting about Habib Ali, saying we're withdrawing all the police forces from the streets. Why? Because the police were implicated in shooting live bullets at protesters. I remember the most popular tweet I ever sent out was this, and I memorized it because it went out several thousand times in the original form, it was retweeted. And the tweet was Al-Jazeera, Egyptian doctors, we have been ordered not to report deaths by live bullets. So this tweet really went out all over. So that meant that the police were using live bullets against Egyptian protesters who didn't have any weapons. And then, so Habib Ali the next three days later withdraws all the police from the streets. Can you imagine being in Michigan, Boston, New York, Washington, LA, and there's not a single police officer in the street how you would feel? It's a frightening thought. Anybody can break into your house and you can't pick up the phone and call 911 and say someone's breaking into my house. So you had this community police started to be formed in Egypt. So I remember tweeting, police officers withdraw from the streets, now they've gone out of this neighborhood, now they've gone out of that neighborhood, reports of thugs going into that area. And I had my TV and I had my laptop and I had my iPhone and I had my headset and I was completely wired, talking on the phone, watching TV, tweeting, listening to the radio, two decoders, reminding, forwarding what was happening in Egypt in those days. I get a phone call from this guy I went to school with. Sultana, yes. Who is it, who is it? And I'm tweeting and I'm like, what's going on? Who is it? And I saw this number from Egypt, who is this? It's me, so I can't say his name. It's me, I went to school with you, become Salem. It's me, Salem, I went to school with you. I'm like, Salaam, what the hell, why, what's going on? And he goes, Sultana, I'm like, oh my God, my friend is calling me from Egypt and it looks like it's interesting. He was able to get a line outside the country. This is so exciting, I'm gonna ask him about what's happening on the ground. And he starts saying things like, and then he starts telling me, Sultana, I have to ask you for something that's very important. My friend is telling me, he's asking something very important, he's gonna tell me something very important. Sultana, you have to stop tweeting. He tells me to stop tweeting. And then people are dozens of comments. No, no, don't stop, don't stop, you can't stop, you can't stop. And then I'm like, oh my God, he's telling me to stop tweeting because I'm threading havoc and chaos in Cairo and in Egypt and people are scared because I'm saying that there's no one in the street, there's no police in the street. And I'm like, oh my God, and so I say, he's asking me to stop tweeting. And then he tells me the reasons why. And I'm like, I'm gonna tell him I can't. He goes, I saw your tweet, I saw that you said you were gonna stop, you have to stop. So I'm like, I'm gonna apologize to him, you can't, you have to stop. So I completely, I mean, I ignored him and I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't. I understand. He goes, I'm standing in the mall and I'm holding a fire hose and I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to open, what's fire hose, open water. At anyone who comes into the mall because I have to protect the mall and he was the head of the mall or something. So I ignored him, fortunately. And I tell you why I ignored him and this is where the role of social media comes in. A lot of people, a lot of Egyptians were depending on information from social media for their own safety. I had a lot of comments, people saying thank you for tweeting that there were thugs in the street in that corner under that bridge in that neighborhood because my sister was gonna go out shopping, my brother was gonna go to the supermarket. But I know, and I'm driving in the street and I'm walking in the street, I have no access to TV, the radio doesn't work. The only thing I have is my blackberry and I can tell that there are thugs in that neighborhood and that's why I didn't let my mom or dad or brothers or sisters go there. So social media in a way did play a role even though it wasn't completely decisive. Now, what happened after Egypt where basically the Middle East fell apart? You had several revolutions, you had Bahrain, you had Syria, you had Libya, you had Yemen of course and the governments adapted to social media. How so? In the beginning, social media was used by young folks, young boys and girls who wanted to communicate with each other. In the beginning they were flirting with each other on social media and then it became a tool of survival. But by the third Arab uprising, the social media was used as a tool against the protesters. You had government affiliated accounts that we refer to as trolls, people that you can't identify. We have others known as, we call them eggs, why do they call them eggs? Because the default Twitter handle, photo, is an egg. So people who just created accounts, and just to attack you, just to threaten you. Governments in the Middle East jailed bloggers, jailed Twitter users, they used their Twitter accounts as a proof against them, against for instance, against them planning a protest, against them using language that the government didn't like. You have several social media activists who are in jail today in the Arab world. And the prison terms, believe it or not prison terms, for retweeting, just taking what someone said and saying that person said this, can vary between three and 10 years in jail in the Arab world. So it was completely, completely insane. On the other hand, you have stories where social media was used in a good way. Four years ago, there was a young Saudi gentleman, Fouad Al Farhan, and he had written a blog called 10 Saudis I Never Want to Meet. And it was just that innocent, I just don't want to meet them. He didn't say I want them to be hurt, he didn't say I want them, something bad to happen to them. He just said I don't want to meet them. And he, one of them was a prince, one was a clergy, one was a mayor, and one was a judge. And within a short while, he was thrown in solitary confinement between November 2007, March 2008. For four to five months, he was in solitary confinement. This was over a blog post. What, fast forward four years, in the midst of the Arab uprisings, that same gentleman, as a result, was called in by a prince of, the prince of the western region of Saudi Arabia, you know, the same government who jailed him. Called them in, how do you do, come in, tell us about your followers, please tell them that we're doing, we're reforming, tell them that we're doing so and so, this is how we're trying to build infrastructure. Say hello to your Twitter users. So this guy, I mean imagine that, from being thrown in jail to the power of people on social media in the Arab world, shows you. There was another case where the Saudi women drivers, for example, on June 17th, between 60 and 90 Saudi women drove on the street and they used social media, number one, to create a Facebook page, identify each other, reach out to each other, choose a date, specific date that they will all do this, so rather than it becoming a singular individual effort, it was a collective effort. It was, and they used the same slogan, and the most beautiful of all, in this case, was the fact that young men, men and women, would tell them, watch out, there's a policeman on this road, avoid the turn, you know, so the girls would be driving and somebody would be reading for them, saying there's a policeman on this junction stopping women drivers. As a result, two out of the 60 were stopped. Only two out of the 60 girls. So you can imagine that without social media perhaps, the number might have been quite higher. Another issue that is quite negative about social media in the Arab world, it was used to spread negative propaganda. In the case of Libya, for instance, there was blatant racism in some of the social media updates. From, I'll give you a background in this. Libya is a country of five to six million people of which one and a half to two million are sub-Saharan African migrants who were working in Libya. Now, you know, in Gaddafi's era in 2000, when he was trying to build bridges with Europe, he went and he cracked down on the African migrants, even though the vast majority of them were there legally, but they cracked down on them. And as a result, 150 Africans died in Libya, of which, ironically, 10%, 15 were Libyan citizens. Because in Southern Libya, you have dark-skinned Libyans. And fast forward 10, 11 years, the social media from the very first date of the Libyan uprising, you had people tweeting, saying, you know, African mercenaries. And imagine, there was a million of them. Can they all be African mercenaries? So you even had an official in Gaddafi's government who ironically moved to the other side and continued using the same vile statements against these migrants. So social media, in this case as well, had a dual use. Now, I'll talk a little bit about the reaction of the Gulf states where I come from. So far, you've had the three Arab populations were able to overthrow their leader, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, I think so. I mean, he's hiding, more or less, he's overthrown. So, but what about the Gulf states? Now, the Gulf states are the wealthier states. You had uprisings in the Gulf states. You had a country to the east of the Arab world called Oman. Hundreds of people protested. The sultan decided to kick out the cabinet. You know, give powers to the consultive council. And that was the end of the uprising, more or less. On the other side, you had Bahrain. Bahrain, you had tens of thousands of people who went out on the street. Bahrain is interesting, why? Because it's probably the most wired country in the Arab world. They have 200% mobile phone penetration rates. They had, it's insane, everyone has two phones, three phones. You know, because I mean, what if someone calls you and you have another line, you could answer. So, so, so, so, so in Bahrain, imagine this. In 2010, one, one, one blog used to have 100,000 hits a day. In a country of half a million. I was in an insane number. Very young population, very educated. Once again, a country that a lot of people didn't expect uprisings to occur because the king had given rights. The, you know, there was a, the minorities, the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus were given rights and they were appointed as ambassadors, members of parliament. So, very progressive country. But something happened and there was an uprising. Within a month, two other Gulf states sent in troops. The uprising was put down, although the dialogue continues. But what about the other Gulf states? The other four Gulf states, Saudi, UAE, where I come from, Qatar and Kuwait. They're the wealthier states. Their reaction to the Arab Spring, and this is a bit, the economics of the Arab Spring, their reaction was very much financial. Saudi Arabia announced, in March, $130 billion aid and infrastructure projects. Massive amount of money, it's actually bigger than the aid package of the US compared to the size of the economy. So, huge, huge amount. For instance, you know, imagine this. The largest number of jobs created overnight, 130,000 jobs in which sector? Wasn't an art and entertainment? It was in security. 130,000 security jobs created in the Gulf. Why? You have tens of thousands of young, unemployed, unhappy, dissatisfied young men and women, but men, within a stroke of a pen, you got them into your security, you turn them to your side. You give them jobs, now they're on your side. Anybody thinking of protesting? We have 130,000 people who probably will come in handy. With regards to Egypt, for instance. Now, Egypt is an interesting case. Egypt was really the balancing state of the Arab world. It had a peace treaty with Israel. They, it had, you know, it had a regime that the world was in general happy with if it continued to reform. So there was, internally people weren't happy, but in general, the rest of the world was happy with Mubarak. Another thing about Egypt is that for the Gulf states, it was a counterbalance to Iran, where Iran is a threat to the Middle East and to the Gulf states. Egypt was the only country that had the sufficient, especially after Iraq was taken out of the equation, was the only country that had the sufficient manpower in the army of about a million people in the army that could balance Iran out. So for the Gulf states, and for the region in general, it was important to have a stable Egypt. And that's why after the fall of Mubarak, the Gulf states went to Egypt and offered so much. Qatar, one of the smaller Gulf states, offered $10 billion in investments to create a million and a half jobs almost in building ports. The UAE offered $3 billion, one and a half billion for an SME fund. Saudi Arabia offered $4 billion. In other countries, where uprisings were starting, like Morocco and Jordan, Saudi gave $2 billion to Jordan and invited them into the GCC Club. The GCC is the Gulf Monarchy's Club. It's the club of the kings of the Gulf. So they invited Jordan and Morocco, even though Morocco, last time I checked, isn't on the Persian Gulf or Arabian Gulf, it's a bit far, but they kind of invited them in because they wanted this alliance of monarchies. But is this sustainable? Is it sustainable? Can you buy your way? Can you continue paying money? It's highly unlikely that you can continue paying money when people's demands are for more human, for more rights. Just checking on time. I think we're pretty much, I'll leave you with one thought, though. You know, there's 22 Arab countries. You know, some of them are monarchies, some of them are republics, they're minorities, they're not all Arab, some of them are Berber, some of them are Jews, some of them are Baha'is, they're minorities. It's a mosaic, really, of cultures. But what happened over the last eight, nine months really was Arabs stepping up, Arabs saying we are citizens, we are no longer subjects. We are citizens that we demand our rights. Regardless of what happens over the next few months, the truth is 100 million Arabs are freer today than they were just eight, nine months ago. This can come, you know, you can see this at the glass half full, glass half empty, but it's a rocky road ahead in which you will see a lot of ups and downs, a lot of things that you are unhappy with will happen. A lot of, maybe some Islamic political groups will come into play. Frankly, I'd rather have them in politics than have them elsewhere, but the truth is not everything will go the way we want it to go, but the trajectory is very positive. In the long term, I believe we will only see a better Middle East because of the Arab awakening. Thank you. Very much. He has kindly agreed to take questions and we will go until no later than 5.30. So if you just put your hand up, identify who you are for the rest of us. Hi, I'm Anne. Do we have mics or just? I think you and I just briefly repeating the question. I will. I guess to make sense. And you may be familiar with an article that got a lot of publicity you have in the way of the airspace and not the blackmail with the worker which basically tried to dispense the notion that social media causes revolutions. And what struck me as what you got wrong was that social media plays a very different function in places like the United States where there's a very strong, where there's civil society strong versus say the Gulf States or the Arab world where civil society is relatively weak. And so even before the Arab Spring you had these Facebook groups like in Saudi Arabia where women would get together and talk about the worry of the veil and how they felt about it and when they get posted. Do you think the role of social media will become less important as civil society grows stronger and if it grows stronger? Okay, the question was do you think the role of social media will become less effective as civil society grows? Definitely, yes. I think part of the reason why social media is so prevalent in the Arab world, why people depend on it so much is the avenue of communications. The official avenues are shut. There is no way to form civil society movements. The government has to appoint the head of the association. Your agenda is very much set by the government. That's why social media really isn't a huge tool here in America because you can just go apply and start your civil society movement within a few hours I think in the States. I think this is definitely the case. Perhaps with the freer countries you will see less and less use of social media. However, there are a lot of countries that will not be free in the next year or two. The Arab Awakening is a generational issue. It will take decades, if not generations. And so I think you will continue to see a role for social media. Yes, sir. Hi, my name is Nathan Thompson. I'm a doctoral student at American University in Washington, DC. I'm spending this year in the Arab world. And my question is less on social media but more of media and more broadly in the Arab world. And I'm particularly interested in your take over recent development for the last couple of days with Al Vazira and Wara Khanfar's timing stepping down and his successor, which it seems is a member of the Royal Family in Qatar. I think most people recognize that Al Vazira, both Arabic and English language, has played an important role in what has unfolded I think in the past eight or nine months as we discussed. But one of the critiques is that it's become increasingly an instrument of Qatari foreign policy and less balanced and I'd be interested in what you think is the pivot point for Al Vazira or what is his stepping down. He hasn't really illustrated, you haven't said the reasons why but you've mentioned WikiVicks earlier and there have been some cables that have come out saying that there's a relationship between some U.S. diplomats and what Al Vazira has been able to do in terms of their coverage. So I think we've all noted that there's been a disparity in Al Vazira as well as it perhaps covered what events unfolding in Egypt and in Libya. Bahrain was completely ignored to the large extent. So do you think that his stepping down is that signpost or are you interested in taking it? So just to put into context, Al Vazira is a channel that was started in 1996. It had 50 million viewers before the Arab awakening. Now it claims between 100 to 150 million viewers. They have an English service as well that broadcast in DC and New York, here in the U.S. on cable. And it's available online. For the past eight years it was headed by a gentleman called Wadah Khanfar, who I know personally. This gentleman stepped down abruptly yesterday and Qatari Sheikh was appointed in his place. The question was, will this affect the integrity of the channel and how it covered Arab awakenings? The truth is, we noticed over the last, first of all, the European is a huge role. When it was kicked out of Egypt and the satellite signal was jammed, Egyptians would volunteer to film video and send it to the channel. That was one of the biggest examples of social media and what is termed as I report or on the amateur journalism. But Al Jazeera, I mean, increasingly looks like it's an extension of the foreign policy of the state of Qatari. A state of Qatari is a very dynamic country in the Arab world. At one point in time it hosted both an Israeli office and Hamas office next to each other. It hosted people from different factions around the Middle East. So it's a very dynamic country. However, the coverage of Al Jazeera in the last six, seven months kind of mirrored what was happening within the Qatari government. Now, which one leads the other? I'm not sure, but for instance, with Libya, Qatari was the first country to recognize the Transitional National Council and Libya's coverage was very much slanted towards the revolutionaries. I mean, regardless of what our feelings were on an individual basis, you have to report very, very fairly with regards to the Egyptian uprising. It also mirrored the ruling family's policy or the state's policy. Yemen, same thing, relations with Israel, when they were going well, Jazeera got a lot of coverage, when they were going back state level-wise, the reporters weren't given permits, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know if we are coupling them together or they are coupled together, but there is definitely a correlation between the channel and there's nothing wrong with that because you've seen other instances here with Voice of America, Radio Free Europe in the States, you also have the BBC, which is still funded by the British Foreign Office. So why can't Qatari have the same kind of relationship with its media arm? But definitely, without that channel, things would have gotten much, much more bloodier, I think. The revolutions will have happened, sooner or later, but I think that having the, there was a famous quote that Wadah Khanfar said, he was getting messages from Egyptians where they had cameras on Tahrir Square, saying please don't switch the cameras off because if you do, a massacre will occur. So this was the general mood that you have a camera so people can see what's happening live and so you have to behave yourself as a dictator, not you, but whoever the dictator is. Yes, sir. Stu Simon, a resident of the community. You mentioned earlier in your remarks that the region has been subject to negative economic growth for decades. Now, a lot of that's been due to petrol dollars, supporting things, but with the advent of democracy, I think democracy requires viable economy. Do the people taking over power in the region understand what they need to do to create viable economies? And in a related way, any advice from you to other countries of the world, including the US in terms of our foreign policy, what we need to do to sustain growth in their economy aside from petrol dollars? Okay, I'll ask you a question, I'll come back to you in the next question. Basically, the world has been giving these countries that have witnessed the uprising, they've been giving them a lot of money, but do you have the institutions that can distribute this funding, first of all? What about corporate governance? Corporate governance was very poor in the Arab world before. How about afterwards? It's not clear. Libya, there's a complete breakdown in a system that didn't even exist in the first place. That just looked like there was a system there. Egypt still has, they still have their NGOs and their civil society movements, et cetera. So it's not really one single case. Yemen also needs a lot of help. There were calls for an Arab bank for reconstruction and development, much like what was created in Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. 200 billion dollars have been pledged for the Arab countries, including 38 billion from the G8 countries. So money should be available, whatever, whether this money materializes or not a different story. But I think what's important is the mechanism to distribute these funds, corporate governance. They have to insist that this money is going to a specific cause rather than to fill up the pockets of corrupt individuals. You had the second part of your question, I can't remember. Advice to the Americans? I mean, America is mature. I don't think anyone should be giving America any advice, but it's just easier if the Middle East or the rest of the world knows where America stands, so it can react and they can plan their future. America has a lot of clout, has a lot of, even has a lot of goodwill. American people have a lot of goodwill in the Middle East, a lot of respect, a lot of people who want to move here. I think America just needs to clarify its position with regards to certain governments in the Arab world, with regards, for example, to the Middle East peace process. The clearer the position is, the easier these countries can deal with in America. There was a call of an Obama doctrine, is there an Obama doctrine? I'm not sure. I'll come back to you after the, yes please. How has the Arab uprising affected your appeal to which you are most familiar, finance and security? How has it affected the market? Oh, some countries are doing very well. Some countries are booming actually. There's, I mean, where I come from in Dubai, the airport is booming. It's just so crowded, the ports. It has not affected. No, but some countries have negative growth. Like for example, in Bahrain, Egypt has 8 million to 10 million tourists a year. How many tourists have you heard of who went into Egypt recently? A number is much, much less than what the country needs, for instance. There is one tourist here who went to Egypt in this room. We, so really it's a mixed bag. However, because it's a very young population, I think that the growth will be very positive for the region from 2012 and 13. Maybe one more point. Egypt was growing very well during the Barak's era. It's shocking. Egypt was growing between 5% and 6% where America had 1% growth. So it's not just economic. It's not just the economic cause that led to the Arab uprisings, but it's very much about dignity, social justice and human rights liberation. So I hope that answers your question. I would like to hear your evaluation of some of the governments that are being formed now. What do you know about the governments that are being formed and what is your opinion? What we know is that there hasn't been a revolution in the sense of a revolution in the Arab world. Those who were empowered in Egypt continue to be empowered in Egypt. Those who were empowered in Tunisia continue to be empowered. What I mean is the military. Mubarak and Ben Ali were just the faces of that military. Yes, that dictator is down, but in reality, the military was in charge. Perhaps in a year or two or a decade or two, the military really would lose its power. Keep in mind Turkey, for instance, after it overthrew the Sultan of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire collapsed, it took decades in Turkey to have complete, free and fair elections that led to the current government and democracy. There was a question, yeah, let's start with the Dean. Yes, ma'am. We have invited our live feed audience to tweet questions that they might have and I'd like to read one of them to you. What is the connection of we are all Khalid Said Facebook page with the early protests if any? Oh, the very instrumental. We are all Khalid Said was a Facebook page that was started by two Egyptians. One of them was more famous than the other. We did talk about this earlier, but it allowed people to identify the method of protest, the time of protest, the location of protest. You can, otherwise, you'd be having to write notes and passing them around the neighborhood. But because of social media, people said we're gonna wear black, we're gonna stand a few yards apart, we won't talk to each other so that no one accuses of congregating in public and we will do this repeatedly over a period of few days. So that's what the, it continues to exist today, we are all Khalid Said. So the role was quite decisive. Just take the gentleman's question. Yeah, my name is Mahatshian, our first year MPP student here. Two questions, one, how come everyone missed it? I remember reading Fiza Anderson, I believe, who was the head of American University of Cairo, so she was right in the middle of it and she confessed that she never knew about it. Second, Ehud Barat, he was sort of amused and he was fairly humorous when he said that. The best secret service on earth missed it completely. That's one side of it, coming to one question, how can we all miss it? And the second, what's the guarantee that these countries wouldn't slip further into a regressive, irreversible regime? What happens if a slightly untrained Islam is kind of a common country? Okay, the question was, how can we missed it, the Arab awakenings? And what if we slip into a regression rather than progress? How can we miss it? The truth is all the signs were there. People can choose to ignore them. In fact, the countries that received the best marks are the countries that had some of the uprisings, whether it was Egypt or Tunisia. I think arrogance was a major factor, at least from the government's level, that they believed that they were immune, they believed that they can continue to repress their people, they believed that they can continue to hire their cousins and their relatives in the top positions and their little mafioso state. And so there was a straw that broke the camel's back, why was it straw number one million and not straw number 995,000, I'm not sure. But there was really one single issue and perhaps it was a collection of factors that came together. The other reason, will we regress? I think in some countries we will regress. I think in some countries, for example, in Tunisia, which was really a model state for secularism and for women's rights, I believe that if the Islamic party comes to power, they might try to put restrictions on women. In Tunisia, women inherit equally as men, women's testimony at court is equal to men, women can divorce their husbands. So there's a lot of women's empowerment in Tunisia. This, we might see a regression in this, but I believe that it will just be a temporary regression. Now that the Islamic parties have to play nice, now that they have to be part of the political process, you will see a lot of coalition building and then there'll be a lot of compromise. In the end, people did not revolt against one dictator to have another dictator stay there. I think we're all conscious of this fact. Did you have a question? I just had a comment about the Khaled Sa'id, Kulina Khaled Sa'id. It was also kind of a tool for expat Egyptians to kind of follow what happened in Egypt, especially those who were not on Twitter. But also I was wondering if you could talk about Palestine and what's next for Palestine now that we, Arabs are rising up and actually doing something and they're going to place their bid at the UN and stuff like that. Okay, the question was, what about Palestine? There's this notorious slash infamous slash gutsy move by the Palestinian government, by the Mahmoud Abbas government to put in a bid to create a 194th state in the United Nations. I think with regards to Palestine, it's gone on for far too long. It's been 63 years. I think now, since some people became refugees, but I believe that Arabs are equally to blame for this. I believe that Palestinians are treated badly in Arab countries and I believe that as an Arab, I want to take ownership of this issue. There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in ghettos in the Arab states, whether it was Egypt or the United States, or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan, we should demand that they get treated better. Why should another generation grow up in injustice and living really in conditions that you wouldn't want animals to live in, crammed up in a city that was built for five and 10,000, you have 200,000 people living there. So first of all, Arabs must take ownership of this issue. We must admit that we have failed Palestinians. Number one, number two, Israel also must be held accountable for this issue. Now, I don't know how it's gonna happen, but these two sides must sit together. Ultimately, I don't think anybody wants this to continue. We've seen demands by people in the street. We've seen pressure coming from different governments. The truth is it's a card that various governments are playing against each other. I don't know the details. I don't tweet about Palestine, Israeli conflict, because it's a minefield that I cannot put my mind around. But all I know is I worked with Jewish people in university, I worked with Arabs, I worked with Christians, I worked with Muslims. They can work well anywhere in the world, except in that region. And so there must be something with the water. There must be something there. I don't know what it is, but someone should check it. So hopefully things, I mean, I remember writing an article saying that that what Osama bin Laden was calling for was a specific sect, a specific people who follow a specific strand of Islam were better than anybody else. And the truth is no one is better than anybody else. No Muslim, no Christian, no Jew, no atheist is better than anybody else. And once we admit to this fact, once we can see through people rather than looking at their religion, laboring them with their religion, think we're going to bypass this issue. But I believe this conflict should not last any longer. A lot of people disagree with what the Habbas government is doing, but there needs to be a jolt. Someone needs to come and jolt the process and maybe this is a jolt, I don't know. Hopefully it will create positive repercussions. I'm sorry, sir, go ahead. My name is John Wilhelm and I have a two-part question. What impact did the previous demonstrations in Iran have and what impact is particularly the success of the Arab Spring likely to have on Iran in the future? A good question. What impact did the Iranian uprising of 2009 have on the Arab Spring and how would it affect the future? First of all, the Iranians apparently tried to elect someone other than Ahmadiyan Ajad, but then Ahmadiyan Ajad was chosen for them to be their president. So they didn't like that much. So hundreds and thousands of them went out on the street demanding their rights, but they were brutally suppressed. We know several things. We know that the Iranian government shared with the Syrian government methods on identifying people on social media. Remember how social media was used as a tool of the counter-revolution? Much of it is thanks to our friend, Nandan Tahran. The second aspect is Iran today is worried about losing its ally in Syria and trying its very best to keep him there. And in fact, whenever you have the supreme leader or the president talk about Arab uprisings, he would say things like in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Egypt, in Tunisia, he would name every country on the face of the earth except Syria. Why? Because that's his best buddy. In fact, Iran is the only friend left to Bashar al-Assad in Syria. I don't know how this will affect. All I know is the supreme leader is old. They have elections in two years' time and Ahmadinejad cannot run for these elections. The Gulf states are very concerned about the Iranian nuclear program. The Iran claims that it is peaceful. My worry is, okay, I believe you, it's peaceful. But if you don't believe me, okay, I believe you, it's peaceful. But it doesn't have international observers checking. And what if Chernobyl happens? And we just live a few hundred kilometers from them. That is if you believe it is peaceful. So in the best case scenario, you're extremely worried. Let alone the worst case scenario. Yes, ma'am? And to turn on the political science and African studies here. And most of my work is on Africa. So I'm very interested in the way in which the Egyptian protests took place because there are a lot of similarities rippling down the continent, even in countries that we might consider them already limited democracies at least. So a lot of countries are watching what happens in the Middle East, but farther south. And one thing I noticed from the coverage is that the middle class in Egypt seems to be, I mean, the military in Egypt seems to be quite middle class. They're in some middle class neighborhoods. Some of the gated communities seem to be dominated by the military. And what I was wondering is, does that predispose them to some of the arguments made by the protesters? Does that make the military therefore more sympathetic to some of the arguments of the protesters? Or alternatively, does it make them very concerned that since some of those protesters are young and unemployed, that a social movement could go in a direction that is decidedly anti-property and anti-middle class? I think that the military should be concerned, very concerned. The fact is they control 30% of the Egyptian economy. What my worry is that they were always in the background. However, today, the head of the Egyptian military is receiving world leaders. He's getting cables sent to him. He's being treated like the president. Now that he has had a taste of the good life, is he going to give up this power? Chances are he's gonna fight for it, even though he is older. We don't know the succession even within the military. It's highly secretive. People did not hear from the military during the Mubarak era. Yes, a lot of them live in gated communities. Egypt has huge unemployment issues. A million people enter the job market every year. There aren't enough jobs for them. The military isn't capable of creating jobs. How do you create jobs? Egyptians are asking for nationalization. Is that a good idea? Perhaps in some sectors. You need the private sector also, entrepreneurship. A lot of these people, the UN Human Development Report says that by 2020, a hundred million jobs should be created in the Arab world to keep the miserable unemployment levels that we have today. Just to keep them, as we are 25% unemployment, you have to have a hundred million jobs by 2020. The military in Egypt won't be able to create jobs. They have to let civil society create jobs the best way they see fit. Is there any other question? Okay. I'm sorry, I didn't see. Why do they make this the last question? Last question, okay. I have a question about the countries we have to think about the Gulf states that do not have revolution. Those are relatively stable. The economy is good. They're growing like crazy, like in Dubai. Could we expect to see anything from them? We didn't expect too easy to happen as a secular country, but that's as well. There's no human rights in Egypt. We expect to see that in Qatar, Dubai, Saudi Arabia. Okay, the question was, do you expect any uprising in the wealthier Gulf states where we didn't hear much? Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia? The answer is, every country in the Gulf is experiencing the Arab world, is experiencing the Arab awakening in a different way. In some areas, you want to complete overhaul of the system. In some states, like Libya, for instance. In other states where you have the military staying, then you have civil society trying to advance the agenda. In other states, like Morocco and Jordan and Oman, the monarchs try to introduce reforms very quickly. In Bahrain, you had the government suppress the uprising. In Saudi Arabia, you had one man show up for the day of rage. Unfortunately, he's detained. It's a story that's quite sad. Every time I think about it, it makes me very sad. So, for instance, in the UAE, in Qatar, the local populations only make up 10% of the entire population. I mean, in general, living conditions are quite satisfied. Yes, you cannot dismiss and say, well, just because everyone's happy doesn't mean that there isn't some kind of political movement. The UAE has elections for a non-legislative parliament coming up in the next couple of days. Will this satisfy people? Some individuals wrote petitions in the Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, in Qatar, in Kuwait. People have been moving. Like I told you, chances are some regimes will take longer to adapt. My personal opinion is, and I am on the record here, my personal opinion is the only way forward for all the monarchies in the Arab world, if they want to stay monarchies, would be to create constitutional monarchies where there's much more people empowerment rather than the absolute rule model that we have today. Before we thank our speaker, I did want to make sure that you know that you're all invited to join us at the reception just outside of the Great Hall and we can continue the conversation more informally. But I would like to give a very special thank you for those insightful and formative, wide-ranging candid remarks. We are very honored to have you here with us today for the Josh Voslethal lecture. Thank you. Thank you very much.