North Africa in 2011 is not eastern Europe in 1989

In the middle of a moving crowd, it can be hard to see the direction of travel.
North Africa is in revolt. The people of Tunisia and Egypt have risen up and ousted their leaders. As I write this, the people of Libya are attempting to do the same. Where will these revolts go next?
The obvious destination is where North Africa's neighbours in Europe ended up. In particular, the eastern European nations after the end of communist rule in 1989, where a similar people's revolt shrugged off Soviet domination in neighbouring countries within a matter of months.
The parallel is important for the beginning of North Africa's trajectory but not for its destination. The North African revolts do more than sweep away ageing autocrats; they also mark the demise of the ideas of the Cold War in North African political thinking. With the departure of Hosni Mubarak and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, the last vestiges of the Soviet world are being swept away, as they were in eastern Europe. But what comes after will probably not follow the same pattern.
Far from being a relic of the past, the Cold War remains an influence in the world today. In geopolitical terms, the demise of the USSR is a recent event. The eastern European countries that threw off the yoke of Soviet domination in the 1980s and 1990s are still emerging from its shadow; Central Asia has yet to fully move on.
Until this year, that was the case in North Africa as well. Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab nationalism had wide influence on the region and Egypt's close relationship with the Soviet Union influenced its neighbours. North Africa wasn't exclusively under the sway of the Soviet Union - Tunisia remained pro-western under Habib Bourguiba - but in the aftermath of the Second World War, no state could entirely escape taking sides.
Because of the long rule of North African leaders, the ideas of the Cold War have remained; even as Egypt shifted to an alliance with the United States, the mentality stayed. These places were marked by the ideas of the Cold War, of the United States versus the USSR. As that paradigm crumbles in North Africa, what will replace it?
Surprisingly, the aftermath of the 1989 revolutions provide only a small amount of help in analysing the convulsions in North Africa.
The end of Soviet rule in eastern Europe came abruptly. But at least there was a clear model for how the future could look.
In North Africa, and particularly in Egypt, what comes next is harder to answer, if only because of the uncertainty over how the pieces now on the board will be played. On a micro level in Egypt, the role of the army will be vital, even decisive, as will the outcome of the old elites' struggle to retain influence.
There is a wider question about the model that Egypt - and the other North African republics - might follow. Turkey and Iraq could provide frameworks, although both are still being defined. Like them, Egypt is a large country, by population and geography, and strategically important.
But Egypt will have to decide swiftly. North Africa in 2011 is not Europe in 1989. The region will probably not have the breathing space for the experiments in democracy that eastern Europe took after the fall of communism, as the old guard transformed themselves into European capitalists. For two reasons: there is no obvious path to take and North Africa is too important to drift.
Take that second point first. As important as the stability of the new European countries were to their western neighbours in 1989, they did not have the vast strategic importance that Egypt and other North African states have for the United States or Europe today. US interests in the Suez canal and in maintaining stable relations with Israel are among its most important foreign-policy objectives - it has poured billions of dollars into the region over decades to achieve them.
For Europe, in North Africa's backyard, stability on the shores of the southern Mediterranean is a political priority. Italy has long been a destination for Tunisians desperate to leave their country. More will follow. What comes after autocracy will have to become clear - and quickly.
Secondly, there is no obvious model or path for Egypt and North Africa to take, as there was for eastern Europe.
As the Iron Curtain came down, Europeans in the east were clear their future did not lie with the USSR but with western Europe. The European Union wasn't as big a project as it is today, but there was a clear model: Hungary, for example, had only to look across the border at Austria, a country with which it had once been united, to see what the future looked like. East Germans only had to peek through chinks in the Berlin Wall to see people like them: countrymen, speaking the same language, with the same customs, except broadly free. The model had worked for their countrymen and for other Europeans - it could work just as well for them.
That is not the case in Egypt or Tunisia, or even Libya.
The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia were, in part, an uprising against the United States. It was Washington that corseted, protected and armed Egypt, happily paying billions as long as the Mubarak regime kept peace with Israel, access through Suez and Islamists out of power.
But the protesters are not anti-American in the way the eastern Europeans were anti-communist. They are pro-freedom. Some have benefited from an education in the United States or Europe; all will be familiar with the West's cultural products. They may not agree with America on everything (which sovereign country does?) but they are not fiercely opposed to it.
The West is not the enemy, nor is it the model. The global financial crisis has ensured its brand of capitalism is tainted and is no longer seen to offer guaranteed prosperity.
One half of the China model - authoritarian rule with growth - has been tried in Egypt, to bad effect. Where Egypt goes next is not necessarily where it will end up. There may be a long road yet - and it will be hard.
As difficult as the political transition will be (and the people of Tahrir Square are demanding a transition to a more open political system), it is the journey after that which will be harder. Stagnation of the sort Mubarak imposed on Egypt is not easily unshackled. Egyptians abroad have fitted easily into the global economy. Egyptians with energy, education or connections will thrive in a more global Egypt. But Egyptians without those advantages will find the transition harder. That has been the experience of eastern Europe in the post-Soviet years: some have won big in their new worlds, others have lost and lost hard.
North Africa thus faces uncertain times, a journey without a clear map. In North Africa, the crowd is still moving. It may have started in a similar way to eastern Europe, but its destination could be very different.
 
falyafai@thenational.ae