Movies That Matter 8

Syrian rebels attend a training session in Maaret Ikhwan, near Idlib, Syria, Dec. 17, 2012.

Mensen die blind kiezen voor de 'Syrische rebellen' maken zich verantwoordelijk voor de uitkomst. Ze steunen een beweging die ze doorgaans niet kennen behalve dan uit de westerse propaganda. Bovendien weten de sympathisanten ook niet welke politiek 'de rebellen' gaan voeren. Eigenlijk weten ze niets, behalve dan dat ze gevoelsmatig tegen het Assad-regime zijn, overigens net als ieder zinnig mens. Maar dat is het vraagstuk niet.

De zogeheten 'Arabische Lente' die in werkelijkheid geen Lente was of is, stemt tot nu toe niet vrolijk, als we bijvoorbeeld afgaan op de situatie in Egypte, waar een kwart van alle Arabieren woont en het bevolkingsrijkste land is van de Arabische wereld. De allereerste prioriteit van een land waar de bevolking elke 8,5 maanden met een miljoen inwoners stijgt is niet 'democratie,' wat dit ook mogen betekenen, maar werkgelegenheid. Zelfs de meeste Nederlanders zouden voor het laatste kiezen als de helft van de bevolking onder de 25 jaar zou zijn en de officiele werkloosheid tezamen met de verborgen werkloosheid schrikbarend hoog is. Al zeven jaar geleden waarschuwde onder andere de Amerikaanse geleerde Isobel Coleman voor het volgende:

The Arab world is experiencing the first tremors of a youthquake

Author: Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy; Director of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative; and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program

February 5, 2006

While the Middle East lurches from crisis to crisis, its greatest challenge today is probably not what most people think. It’s jobs.
With 65 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, the Middle East has the fastest-growing labor force of any part of the world. This youth bulge is surging onto the labor market like a massive demographic tsunami. Just to keep pace with population growth, the Middle East must create 80 million new jobs over the next 15 years. And if it hopes to put a dent in its already high unemployment rate of 15 percent, it must create 100 million new jobs by 2020—a near doubling of today’s total employment.
To put this into perspective, the Middle East must create jobs at twice the pace of the United States in the go-go Clinton years, in an increasingly competitive international environment that is already accommodating the rise of India and China. Without making deep structural reforms, Middle East governments will never be able to meet the employment needs of its increasingly disaffected youth—a stark fact that, left unaddressed, leaves an entire generation ripe for radicalization.
Unemployment is a problem throughout Arab society, but it is most acutely a youth issue. Fifty percent of those unemployed are between the ages of 15 and 24. Unemployment is also highest among those with some formal education. In the past, these young graduates could expect employment in the public sector, but as formal education has significantly expanded over the past generation and government coffers have come under increasing pressure, the public sector can no longer absorb what public school systems produce.

http://www.cfr.org/economic-development/arab-world-experiencing-first-tremors-youthquake/p9809

Zodra democratie de jeugd werk en een toekomst kan verschaffen zal ze voor de democratie zijn. Maar kan de democratie in Nederland voor werkgelegenheid zorgen? Nee. Veel ongeschoold werk is geoutsourced naar de lage lonenlanden en op dit moment wordt bijvoorbeeld ook geschoold computerwerk naar India en andere ontwikkelingslanden overgeplaatst. Ondertussen stijgt in Nederland zelf de werkloosheid onder academisch geschoolden en krijgt maar een zeer klein percentage jongeren vast werk aangeboden. Het meeste werk voor de jeugd gaat tegenwoordig op contractbasis zonder alle sociale bescherming die mijn generatie kreeg. Op een bepaalde manier kan men stellen dat de westerse werknemer vandaag de dag moet concurreren met de werknemer in ontwikkelingslanden. Als onze kinderen genoegen gaan nemen met de lonen in de Derde Wereld komt het werk automatisch terug. Hoe dan ook, dit verandert niets aan de situatie in de Arabische wereld, dat als een gordel van misere rond de zuidgrens van Europa ligt. 

Wanneer een democratisch systeem de jongeren daar geen toekomst kan bieden, zal de jeugd er in opstand komen tegen welk systeem dan ook, democratisch of niet. Inmiddels weten we dit:

Youth as the Drivers of Change

Egyptians of all ages and walks of life participated in the protests, unified in aspirations and demands including political freedom, better wages, and better working conditions. But it was the astonishing numbers of young people participating in demonstrations that gave the uprising its momentum, and were key to sustaining it, as hundreds of thousands gathered in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo and other cities across the country. Egypt's youth are the faces behind this leaderless revolution; the revolt, in large part, was spurred by their finesse in using social media to organize and make their voices heard.

Young people arguably have the most at stake in the outcome of this revolution. The results have immediate impact and future implications in how they construct their lives. Recent studies show the frustrations young Egyptians feel at the stagnancy of their lives. They are a generation waiting for better access to quality education, secure employment, and the financial stability necessary to get married and start their own families.

High Unemployment and Lack of Appropriate Education Frustrate Youth

At least 90 percent of the unemployed in Egypt are youth; the situation is particularly tough for young women looking for a job. In the Population Council's 2009 survey conducted among youth in Egypt, 30 percent of males ages 15 to 29 said they were looking to migrate, mostly to an oil-rich Gulf state and largely because they did not expect to find work at home; 70 percent of unemployed youth said that they were jobless because there was simply no work available.¹ More than 40 percent thought personal connections were more important than personal skills in securing a job, one reflection of the society-wide corruption that ignited the protests.

Studies of the school-to-work transition in Egypt show that young people face serious challenges in finding employment—not only because of the scarcity of jobs relative to the number of new entrants in the job market, but also because of their lack of appropriate education.² While enrollment in secondary and higher education has reached unprecedented levels for both girls and boys, it has not translated into higher employment rates and wages for young people. This is in part because Egypt's educational system has been geared toward preparing students to serve in the public sector, which used to be—but is no longer—the primary employer of new graduates. Much of the material taught in the public school system has become obsolete, at odds with the demand for modern skills and critical thinking. Only about 50 percent of higher education students who participated in the 2009 youth survey believed that their education prepared them for the labor market. Overhauling Egypt's public education system is essential in order to prepare its young labor force for the country's evolving market economy, one that is adopting new technologies and increasingly connected to global financial and commercial networks.

Significant segments of Egypt's population have yet to benefit from, and have been unable to contribute to, their country's economic growth. A recent report by the Egyptian Council of Ministers shows that the number of Egyptians living below the poverty line has risen from 17 percent in 2000 to 22 percent in 2010, with people living in rural areas making up about 80 percent of the poor.³ More than one-half of the population still lives in rural areas and accounts for the majority of the country's illiterate population, estimated to be in the millions.⁴ This educational deficit is also marked by a pronounced gender gap: Two-thirds of illiterate youth are female.

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2011/youth-egypt-revolt.aspx

Wat ik hiermee wil stellen is dat de veronderstelling dat het in feite allemaal draait om democratie, een gevaarlijke misvatting is. Democratie zonder werk is niets, zoals we in het interbellum in Europa hebben kunnen zien. Het blind steunen van de 'democratisch oppositie,'  is dan ook -- zo mogelijk -- minder dan niets. Het is een totaal vrijblijvend gebaar, volkomen inhoudsloos, dat alleen maar de eigenwaan voedt. Het aan het woord laten van iemand die zichzelf de identiteit van 'Syrian American rapper' heeft aangemeten, is populistische nonsens. Ik kom hierop terug. Dan ook hoe we de Arabische wereld werkelijk zouden kunnen helpen.