The news from the Middle East for the past few weeks has been riveting to watch and live through. Young and old protesters taking to the streets and relying on nonviolent tactics in Tunisia, and then a few days later seeing the faces of at least a million Egyptians march in Cairo and Alexandria and calling for the end of a dictatorship, and all the while stressing nonviolence.
A population so set on achieving nonviolent solutions to unseat a dictator has given me a feeling that something was working there about which one could only dare dream. As we all know, President Obama was in Egypt in June 2009 and gave a dynamic speech about democracy. I read the speech and was quite surprised that no one balked at his subject, knowing that Egypt was not a democracy.
How did this nonviolent revolution come about? How did so many understand the basic rules of nonviolent tactics? Gene Sharp, who has been a giant among those of us in the peace movement but barely known outside these circles, has worked tirelessly for years in defining what and how nonviolent strategies succeed. His book ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’ — a 93-page guide to bringing down autocrats — is available in 24 languages and has been an inspiration to many.
The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict had quietly led workshops in Cairo several years ago, training Egyptian democracy activists. Sharp’s booklet, ‘198 Methods of Nonviolent Action,’ was translated into Arabic and made available to many protesters in Tunisia and Egypt. FOR literature used in the civil rights movement had also been translated into Arabic and widely distributed.
There are times when working in the peace movement that one loses sight of the prize. But seeing the results in Egypt has made it clear that persistent peace education and nonviolent resistance training can create meaningful change.