By Rami G. Khouri

What is it that drives ordinary Arab men and women to do extraordinary things, such as demonstrate against their government for 12 months non-stop, at the risk of being killed every day? I have heard many explanations for the ongoing Arab uprisings, but one of the best and most succinct I heard was at a seminar on Arab youth unemployment this week in Beirut, co-sponsored by the International Labor Organization regional office and Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation. ILO regional director Nada al-Nashef captured one of the most complex but important dynamics underpinning the uprisings when she said that to learn the lessons of the past 16 months of populist citizen revolts across the region, we must better understand “the nexus between unemployment, poverty and inequality” defining the lives and attitudes of so many young men and women in the Middle East. That may sound like obvious and slightly clichéd, but it strikes me as profoundly important for touching the heart of the malaise that had driven millions of Arabs to revolt.
 
Nashef touched the critical emotional center of gravity of the Arab uprisings. This is more striking in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen today than even the overthrow of the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan regimes last year, because of the sheer magnitude, danger and longevity of the continuing protests. What kind of mindset is it that drives men and women of all ages – not just unemployed youth – to go out into the streets of Syria, Bahrain and Yemen to peacefully protest because their government is treating them with disdain, inequality and injustice? And this when the demonstrators know very well that their chances of being killed or tortured are relatively high, compared to other nonviolent protests around the world.
 
What is this indomitable force that sends Arab men and women into the streets for 10, 11 or 12 months in a row, braving death, defying arrest and degradation, in order to shatter their own humiliation and transgress their vulnerabilities? How do we explain this willingness – no, more than willingness, this determination – to risk one’s physical life in order to bring about a better quality of total life in the political, social, economic and psychological realms?
 
In a few days it will be 15 months since demonstrators took to the streets of rural Tunisia to challenge police brutality during protests that followed the death of Mohammad Bouazizi. Defying death, still the demonstrators take to the streets, finding ever more effective ways of organizing themselves.
 
It will take time and plenty of serious research to fully understand the underlying motivation that causes otherwise ordinary and unexceptional human beings – fruit vendors, shopkeepers, teachers, farmers, taxi drivers – to persist in this extraordinary feat.
 
One thing already is clear. Men and women who are mistreated by their own government for years on end go through a linear process by which they move from irritation, anger and indignity, to humiliation, to defiance and protest, to open revolt and finally to full-scale national revolution. That critical path from listless, deprived subject to empowered, assertive citizen is sparked in large part by the combination of phenomena that Nashef captured so succinctly – unemployment, poverty and inequality.
 
These three attributes capture the critical dimensions of a citizen’s life that usually balance each other out to maintain social order. A poor or unemployed person does not automatically revolt from those conditions, if he or she feels there are opportunities to improve their condition. But if they are poor and are also subjected to continuous and structural mistreatment and discrimination, they will ultimately fight back to regain their humanity and live a normal life.
 
Citizens who experience poverty and inequality together suffer deprivations in their material needs – food, schooling, health care, housing and so on – alongside denial in their political or psychological needs – namely, being able to take care of themselves and their families and act to improve their living conditions. If this condition endures for years, a human being loses his or her humanity, and turns into a vegetative organism – until that moment when the humiliation and degradation become too much to bear, and the conscious human spirit fights back, demanding the full rights and attributes of the human condition in its modern form, as a citizen of a sovereign state.
 
When and why that moment strikes – and how it strikes millions of people simultaneously across half a dozen countries – must be a high priority for those researchers and analysts who are now focusing so much attention on the continuing Arab uprisings.
 
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.