What the Arab World's Past Can Tell Us About Its Future

The following comments are taken from a well-written article, which can be read in its entirety by clicking here. It spells out the historical evidence surrounding the Arab world and how the recent unpredictable unrest could be looked at.

Few other regions that the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) examines in its regular Human Development Reports have done so poorly in so many ways as the Arab world. The education system is miserable and the illiteracy rate extremely high in most countries in the Arab League. Almost half of the adult population cannot read or write in Mauritania, Morocco and Yemen, while illiteracy rates are at 28, 30 and 38 percent, respectively, in Egypt, Algeria and Sudan. Until a few years ago, even sub-Saharan Africa had more Internet connections than the Arab world.


Few regions are as unproductive. All the Arab states together, with their combined population of 350 million, produce less in economic terms than Italy's 60 million people. Only 3 percent of the Libyan population works in the oil sector, which, until recently, accounted for more than 60 percent of the gross domestic product. What exactly did the rest of the population do? Official youth unemployment is at 26 percent in a rich oil-producing country like Saudi Arabia, while the unofficial rate in the countries of North Africa's Maghreb region lies at 70 percent. One-third of the people of Mauritania and Yemen, and one-fifth of Egyptians, live on less than $2 a day.

The Arab world isn't poor. But no region of the world has treated its resources -- and half of its labor force, namely women -- as negligently. Only about 5 percent of members of parliaments in the region stretching from Morocco to Bahrain are female. And while more than 16,000 international patent applications were filed in South Korea alone between 1980 and 1999, only 77 were filed in Egypt in the same period.

In no Arab country, with the exception of Lebanon with its proportional democracy, are there significant signs of an emerging civil society. Nowhere is there a democratic tradition which could provide a basis for those who plan to govern in the wake of the revolutions of recent weeks, not to mention those revolutions that could still be to come.

…… the most urgent question of the hour is not whether the Islamists or secular parties come to power in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and later perhaps Syria and Jordan. The most urgent question is: Who will solve the enormous economic problems of these countries, and who will close the gaping prosperity divide? More than half of the population in the Maghreb countries is younger than 30. Who will create the 700,000 jobs that are needed in Egypt alone to provide wages and food for the students graduating from school in a single year?

It is obvious that the countries of the Middle East cannot perform this task alone, no matter who is in charge. In addition to the rich oil-producing countries, the West, and particularly neighboring Europe, should step up to the plate [as the USA did with the Marshall Plan for a devastated Europe].

George Dagnino, PhD
Editor, The Peter Dag Portfolio. Since 1977
Ranked second best gold timer by Timer Digest

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