"The coronavirus has intensified the crises in Arab countries"

The exceptional circumstances of the Middle Eastern countries have caused the coronavirus crisis to intensify other crises that were dormant. This was the main conclusion of the Casa Árabe conference held this week via Youtube, and which featured the participation of Haizam Amirah Fernández, Senior Researcher at the Real Instituto el Cano; Julia Choucair Vizoso, Senior Researcher, also associated with Elcano; Eduard Soler i Lecha, Senior Researcher at the CIDOB Foundation; and Ibrahim Awad, Lecturer in International Relations at the American University in Cairo, coordinated by Karim Hauser of Casa Árabe.

In February, the focus of the infection was in China, but it quickly moved to Iran, even reaching the highest levels of Iranian power, such as the Deputy Minister of Health. The epicentre in the Islamic Republic was located in the city of Qom and several surrounding countries warned of the virus, suspending flights, closing borders and cancelling mass events, including prayers. 

"The suspension of prayers and airports such as those in Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain ... is going to be an unprecedented crisis," says Hazman Amirah. The senior researcher at the Real Instituto Elcano stressed the importance of taking into account that, in addition to the economic crisis already being felt in the countries of the region, there is also demographic pressure and problems in health services, as well as already existing political pressure in places like Beirut, Algiers and Baghdad, and that the pandemic "may make this pressure cooker explode" with more serious dimensions than before.

The experts are clear: in the already extreme situation that most of these nations were experiencing. "This is a crisis of multiple dimensions," says Eduard Soles i Lecha.

"There are different degrees of greater or lesser vulnerability. There are the countries most exposed to southern European economies, which have now been hit hard; or those that depend mostly on tourism or on sending remittances from those citizens who live in Europe and used to send money to their families, but now they can no longer do so," says Julia Choucair.

In addition to these vulnerabilities, which have been accentuated by the coronavirus crisis, researchers question whether the data provided by governments are completely accurate, simply because they do not have the means to obtain a deep and realistic understanding of the spread of the disease. "In the Arab world there are two nurses for every thousand inhabitants and the expense in health corresponds to 5% of the gross domestic product (GDP), when on the global average there are eight nurses for every thousand inhabitants and an average expense of 10% of the GDP", points out Choucair.

The governments were unable to control protests in cities such as Beirut, Algiers or Baghdad. The coronavirus, on the other hand, has been able to, forcing the masses to remain in their homes, clearing streets that had been full of people protesting against the corrupt elites, the rigidity of the system or the deteriorating economic situation for months.

"The pandemic comes at a time when the Middle East is experiencing mass resistance movements and the governments of Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq have taken advantage of the situation to try to recover the legitimacy that the protests had stolen from them and are distributing masks, money, etc.", says researcher Choucair.

Furthermore, "in these countries one can speak of 'securitisation', a term that means that the government in power presents a threat to the state' security - in this case COVID-19 - and uses it as an excuse to carry out exceptional measures of more control, and which authoritarian regimes take as a gift", warns Awad.

Although we are still in an early stage, where cases of contagion are not as pronounced as in the United States or Europe, "this health emergency is going to increase the general malaise and if we add to this the sharp and pronounced fall in the economic crisis, especially due to the historic drop in the price of a barrel of oil, and tourism, it could cause these countries to be torn apart," Haizam said.

While not all countries in the region will be equally affected, it must be taken into account that the states that comprise the Arab world are very different. There are the Gulf countries, which are more developed and have a better health system, which has been demonstrated, since, according to the data, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, two of the richest countries, have been able to carry out massive tests and therefore better control the virus.

Another issue that concerns researchers is how it will affect forced confinement in countries where the majority of the population lives on a daily basis and has little savings. "In Egypt, 80 per cent of the population works in what we call the informal economy," says the professor at Cairo University, that is to say in an underground economy where they are not entitled to health insurance and where they are paid on a daily basis. 

"The real challenge will be for governments to deal with the prices of oil, hydrocarbons, in a price war already started by Saudi Arabia," say the speakers.

"It is time for the European Union to help the southern Mediterranean area," says Soler. "The Arab League, as usual, is conspicuous by its absence; unlike the Central African countries where the African Union has shown its cooperation towards mitigating the devastating effects of this crisis," he adds.

This is an unprecedented situation that will see transformations that will require a change in ways of acting, and may provide an opportunity to negotiate a new social contract, "because repression alone is not going to do much good," says Haizam. "A lot will depend on an international agreement," says Awad. It should be noted, in this line, that social peace in these adverse circumstances is in danger with COVID-19, also in places like Syria, Yemen, Libya or Palestine, where it will only further aggravate the dysfunctionality of infrastructures and the lack of goods.

Despite the bad news, it is true that certain approximations that seemed impossible have been seen, such as the one pointed out by Soler: "Hamas and the Israeli government have carried out a minimal collaboration, and in Yemen the intensity of the conflict has been reduced", although, nevertheless, he assures that the COVID-19 is not going to be the "revulsive" that puts an end to these combats.