Uncharted 3 Water Escape
Vita Wanberg
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I stashed the two million, then hatched a getaway plan. A few planes, trains and automobiles found me on a remote stretch of the Scandinavian coast with my Norwegian partner-in-crime. No one would find us here.
The two million was the jumbo seed investment my new company had just received. Telling investors I'd be skipping town for a month within days of their financial commitment wasn't easy. To their credit, they understood and were supportive.
I was a novice sailor. True to his Viking heritage, he was born with a rope in his hand. Our friends and family thought I was courageous, foolish or both. Truth is ignorance was on my side. His was the greater act of courage. He was venturing into uncharted waters with a mate who was counting on "Sailing for Dummies" to teach her the ropes of surviving the hostile Nordic seas. In case you're wondering, the sailing for dummies part is embarrassingly true.
That was 11 years ago. Without fail, we escape for our month of sailing no matter what's happening. Same time each year. We've started and sold multiple companies, orchestrated a cross-continental move from San Francisco to Berlin while navigating the North Sea, dialed in for board meetings at 2 a.m. while anchoring in remote coves where the nearest signs of life were the weird, wonderful bioluminescent sea.
Going off the grid was easier in those early days. In recent years, the cell reception in the middle of the North Sea is far better than it is in Silicon Valley, so the notion of being unplugged is more a mindset and test of discipline, than a physical reality.
Ignore the Trees. We all know stepping back is the best way to gain clarity, yet we rarely give ourselves the time and distance to see the forest. It would have been easy to view my taking a month when starting a company as irresponsible or to question my commitment. I'd been working on my startup for months and was in a bit of a waiting game around a technology acquisition. Stepping back allowed me to reflect deeply on the kind of company, team and culture I wanted to create, the kind of leader I needed to become and the core values that would serve as our compass.
Get out of the way, follow or lead. I was a terrible skipper's mate. Not because of the steep learning curve or because I lacked the hard skills, but because I kept trying to be the skipper. At the office I was in charge, so taking the helm felt most comfortable. Problem was we already had an experienced skipper, and I was in the way. Our lives depended on him leading and me following. Being forced to adapt to a new role as skipper's mate and taking orders was humbling and hard on my ego.
In an environment that prizes entrepreneurship, many of us have been positively reinforced for being solo players. Knowing when to lead, follow someone else's lead, or at a minimum, getting out of the way is ultimately what distinguishes the best kind of skillful leader.
The Middle East Program in Washington combines in-depth regional knowledge with incisive comparative analysis to provide deeply informed recommendations. With expertise in the Gulf, North Africa, Iran, and Israel/Palestine, we examine crosscutting themes of political, economic, and social change in both English and Arabic.
These reversals not only undermined short-term political gains by Islamist political parties, but they also disrupted carefully cultivated gradualist political strategies, discredited long-held ideological and strategic convictions, and reshaped the terrain of Islamist politics. Prior to the Arab uprisings, most Islamist parties presented fairly stable and predictable political strategies, organizational structures, and ideological positions. Both the political openings of 2011 and the harsh reversals in subsequent years placed new demands on these movements. Hasty, erratic political maneuvering replaced cautious long-term political strategies as Islamists struggled to grasp new opportunities and respond to new threats. Today, most Islamist parties find themselves navigating in uncharted waters as they struggle with new forms of state repression, social polarization, organizational distress, regional rivalries, international hostility, and intra-Islamist competition.
The failures of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have often been taken as emblematic of a wider pathology in Islamist politics. The poor choices, alienating behavior, and ultimate failure of the Egyptian Brotherhood after 2011 have been explained in terms of the particularities of its organizational structure and Islamist ideology.1 But other national Brotherhood organizations have responded quite differently, and more successfully, to recent regional political developments. Even inside Egypt, sharply different approaches have emerged across generational and ideological divides within the Muslim Brotherhood itself.
The track record of the post-Arab uprising period does not support the conclusion that Islamists are especially ideological actors or that they have been revealed to be inherently incapable of participating in democratic politics. Not all Islamist parties face equally grim prospects, and outside of Egypt some have found new opportunities to advance their political agendas. What does the full spectrum of political adjustments by mainstream Islamist parties say about their current conditions and their likely future political prospects?
Political context, not qualities inherent to Islamist ideology or organization, best accounts for the full range of recent outcomes. These Islamist parties had choices shaped by local political context, and some national parties did better than others in steering through their new environments. Islamist party choices should be understood not as pure expressions of their ideology but as responses to political opportunities and challenges. Their choices are often more tactically driven and less ideologically transformative than they may appear at first blush.
The behavior of Islamist parties should be analyzed as pragmatic responses to political conditions shaped by domestic, regional, and intra-Islamist dynamics.5 This new environment affects all political actors, not just Islamists. Too often, Islamist parties are studied in isolation from the broader political field, which can lead to an exaggeration of their strengths or failings. In an Arab world in transition, all actors are struggling to find effective modes of political action, and all have made bewilderingly bad decisions. The same political turmoil that shaped Islamist behavior also drove the rise of extreme anti-Islamist trends across the Middle East, especially in transitional countries such as Egypt and Tunisia.
Some Islamist parties have done far better in the turbulent politics of the last six years than others. This is not to minimize the complexity and powerful challenges facing many of these Islamist parties in the post-2011 Middle East. Regional and national repression has put immense pressure on Muslim Brotherhood branches in major Arab countries, discredited their ideology, and poisoned their public presence.6
The most profound changes since 2011 can be seen in Egypt, where none of these core characteristics still exists. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood no longer has a strong overt presence in society or an elaborate public network of social services. Its organization now faces internal opposition. The nonviolence it espoused is being questioned by its own members. Its dispersed leadership is less able to exercise control. And the Brotherhood can no longer contest elections.
Elsewhere, Islamist organizations have adapted differently to the new challenges. Some have retained most of the institutional forms and political strategies they had before the 2011 uprisings, while others have jettisoned or altered some of their key characteristics to preserve their overall political and social position. Among Islamist groups the choices have varied. Some have survived repression and chosen to return to political life. Others have engaged in post-Islamist politics by allowing themselves to be co-opted by regimes. Yet others have fought in civil wars or have sought to demonstrate their value to Arab regimes.
Two Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, those in Jordan and Kuwait, have faced considerable pressure from their respective regimes. After repeatedly boycotting elections, they concluded that this strategy only further marginalized them and chose to return to political life.
In Jordan, the Islamic Action Front was for years at the forefront of political participation by Islamist movements in the region. It took part in several parliamentary elections after 1989, in which it stood as the leading opposition party, and boycotted others over complaints of regime manipulation of the electoral system. However, the decision to boycott elections in 2013 divided the movement, with some of its leaders seeking a more confrontational stance and others pushing to align more closely with the regime. The Jordanian government exploited such rifts within the established Muslim Brotherhood to sponsor the creation of a new Brotherhood organization, while confiscating the assets and revoking the legal status of the old one. In June 2016, the Islamic Action Front, despite such pressures, announced it would contest the parliamentary elections scheduled for September, ending years of electoral boycotts.7 It did so by placing candidates on multiple electoral lists and calibrated its political message to downplay Islamist slogans in favor of broad alliances. Though the overall turnout was low, the Muslim Brotherhood won sixteen seats in the 130-member parliament.
In Palestinian areas, Hamas, while operating within a very different institutional context and embodying a very different history of both governance and violence, also found itself caught up amid these changes. Regional politics profoundly constrained its ability to govern the Gaza Strip or mobilize support among the broader Palestinian public. Even during the year of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt, Cairo did little to ease the blockade of Gaza. Since the coup, the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has cooperated closely with Israel in reinforcing the cordon around the territory and has loudly identified Hamas, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, as an enemy. The Syrian civil war emptied the so-called Axis of Resistance (which brought together Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria) of its political value and cost Hamas its base in Damascus.14 Quiet rapprochement between Israel and many Arab regimes, driven in part by shared opposition to the U.S.-led nuclear agreement with Iran, increased the financial and political pressures on Hamas. As part of its efforts to adapt to the new situation, in April 2016 the organization announced that it had formally severed its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
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