Predicting the Egyptian revolution

The failures of our intelligence services to predict world changing events are legion: Mao’s 1949 revolution in China took us by surprise, as did North Vietnam’s 1968 Tet Offensive. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was enraged with the CIA’s inability to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall, after years of reporting on the Soviet Union’s staying power. 

Responding to criticisms on Egypt, the Obama Administration’s nominee as Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, defended intelligence professionals: the CIA has been tracking unrest in North Africa for years, he said, “but we are not clairvoyant.”

If history is a guide, the intelligence failure in Egypt will result in yet another intelligence reorganization – or an increase in the intelligence budget. But in the case of Egypt, at least, the failure to predict that the protests in Tahrir Square would overthrow Hosni Mubarak is far more fundamental; it cannot be corrected by moving boxes on the intelligence community’s organogram. 

The intelligence community doesn’t need new money, it needs new thinking – and a shift in how we view the Arab world. There are three things we can do to make certain we’re not surprised again. 

First, the U.S. must jettison its policy of refusing to talk to “terrorists.” Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are among the most important political currents in the Arab world. We don’t talk to any of them. While this notion is controversial, there’s a precedent for doing so. 

In July of 2004, a group of U.S. Marine Corps officers talked with Iraqi “terrorist leaders” during a business conference in Amman, Jordan. The result led to the “Anbar Awakening,” when the “terrorists” became “insurgents” and turned their guns on al-Qaeda. The head of the Amman delegation, Marine Colonel Mike Walker, admits that his discussions with the insurgents were uncomfortable, but necessary. “We need to grow up,” he says. “Remember that picture of Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta? Well, Stalin is also in that picture.”   

Second, we need to rethink our language. This is more important than it might seem: for thirty years we viewed Hosni Mubarak as a kind of benign monarch, the head of a “moderate” regime. Our view was reinforced by his support for the 1979 Camp David Accords, which normalized relations between Egypt and Israel and became “the cornerstone of stability” in the region. 

But our description of Mubarak and his regime blinded us to the realities of his rule: while Mubarak might have seemed like a moderate to us, he wasn’t viewed that way by his own people. We need to be blunt with Israel – the key to their survival in the region will come when they’re surrounded by democracies, not police states. 

Third, the U.S. intelligence community (and the U.S. Congress) must open its doors to civil society – the community of non-governmental organizations and political activists who “think outside the box” because they live outside the box. These are Americans who actually work on the ground in the region and are in touch with the most important Islamist and secular groups in the Arab world. 

If the CIA (and the U.S. Congress) had been briefed by these people, they would have known that a small group of dedicated young people were planning a demonstration in Cairo that would bring together thousands of people. The French Revolution began in the cafes of Paris, the American Revolution in a tavern in Boston and the Egyptian Revolution on Facebook. 

Each of the groups was quite different, and organized their protests differently. But each of the groups had one thing in common – they were united by the belief that change is possible. It’s true: we can’t be clairvoyant. But refusing to talk to people because they’re not experts is inexcusable.

Our long-term friendship with Israel is one of the unstated “problems” we face in opening to political Islam and to secular Arab groups who oppose their own governments. But talking with “terrorists” and “thinking outside the box” need not undermine our fundamental commitment to Israel’s security. 

Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood have all participated in democratic elections – and they are a fact of life in each of their societies. Then too, Israeli policymakers seem more realistic than ours. They talk to those very groups we shun. Recently, I spoke to a senior leader of Hamas who was jailed by Israel for six months last year. He waved off my concern. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “they just wanted to talk to me.” 

In Stilwell and the American Experience in China, historian Barbara Tuchman tried to explain why the U.S. supported the “moderate” Chiang Kai-shek for forty years – even when it became clear that Mao’s communists had the support of the Chinese people. “To halt the momentum of an accepted idea, to reexamine assumptions; is a disturbing process and required more courage than governments can generally summon.” That judgment seems particularly pertinent now, when unpredicted revolutions are changing the face of the Middle East. It’s time to reexamine our assumptions – it’s time to summon principled courage. 

Mark Perry is a political analyst and author living in Arlington, Virginia. Over the last decade he has been conducting discussions with the senior leadership of the Arab world’s Islamist movements. His most recent book is Talking To Terrorists.