During the course of 2011, a recurrent chant resonated across the Arab region: “The people want to topple the regime.” It skipped borders with ease, published widely in newspapers and magazines, on Twitter and Facebook, on the frequencies of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Arab nationalism had been written off, but here, in full bloom, was what certainly looked like a pan-Arab awakening.
Young people in search of political freedom and economic opportunity, weary of waking up to the same tedium day after day, rose up against their sclerotic masters. The Arab Spring is a term that is coined by media for the revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both non-violent and violent), riots, and civil wars in the Arab world that began on December 18, 2010 and has been continuing ever since. It came as a surprise. For almost two generations, waves of democracy had swept over other regions, from southern and eastern Europe to Latin America, from East Asia to Africa. But not the Middle East.
To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan; and minor protests have occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti and Western Sahara. Arab spring was anticipated to bring great change throughout the Arab world, but now some commentators are saying it was all an illusion - that the Arab Spring, which appeared to be the harbinger of democracy, has brought nothing but disorder.
Others go further and argue that Arabs, or Muslims, are so trapped in sectarianism and intolerance that they are incapable of democracy. But, neither claim stands up to scrutiny. It is obvious enough that the heady days of 2011 - when Arabs took to the streets and overthrew three dictators - are now a distant memory. Many of those who took part in the protests two years ago are deeply disillusioned. Their lives are no better, and in many cases they are in worse situation than before.
But it is necessary to ask what went wrong, and draw the right lessons. A true post-mortem on the Arab Spring brings forward some underlying truths behind this immense upsurge of mass-protest.
It was never going to be quick or easy
The first message is that the Arab Spring is a course, not an event. Arab rulers, and the elites who gave the course nourishment, were never likely to move over and die. The West’s role was always sure to be uncertain. It found itself on both wings - worried to encourage young democracies, but not to estrange old autocracies. In societies that have been long repressed by autocracies, democratic actions - tolerant, pluralistic, and dedicated to human rights - were never likely to emerge, fully shaped, overnight. This was always going to be, across the region, a protracted generational struggle.
There is no fixed pattern
The second message - obvious in retrospect - is that dissimilar circumstances produce dissimilar outcomes. In Tunisia, the armed forces abandoned the dictator - and then pulled out from the political juncture. In Egypt, the antithesis took place. Twice, after huge widespread demonstration, the military have intervened and removed a ruler. But having held power, they have used it inefficiently.
In Libya - so far an extraordinary case - it was Western intervention which tilted the balance, fastening the dictator’s fate. In Syria the West is, with good reason, unwilling to intervene - leaving it to local and regional forces to sort it out, so far indeterminately. There is no fixed shape - hence no uniform result, let alone democracy.
The Islamists are at a crossroads
The third message is that, across the region, Islamists have had a taste of power - but have used it in very diverse ways. In Tunisia, they assumed that they could not rule alone.
The Egyptian Islamists, in contrast, made the mistake of riding roughshod over their opponents. Unable to shake off a deep-seated paranoia, they tended to see all opposition as proof of conspiracy. And, fatally, they misjudged the power of the military. But the belief that the Islamists are in retreat in the region, is mistaken. They are on the defensive, but far from vanquished. The question is what lesson they choose to draw from recent events. Some Egyptian Islamists may realise they can’t blame everyone else for their fate: they had their chance to exercise power, and blew it.
Others, in Egypt or Syria or elsewhere, may decide that democracy leads nowhere, and that only through violence can the Islamist utopia be realised.
People power is not enough
Finally, the Arab uprisings have exposed the power, and also the shortcomings, of mass protest. The idea of popular empowerment has taken origin, reared by satellite television and the social media. No country is safe. It is an insurrection of the human mind. But the hard lesson is that, by itself, people power is not enough. The long-term challenge is to translate popular protest and popular anger into real and lasting change. If that fails to happen, the promise of the Arab Spring will be unfulfilled.
Social media fuels Arab Spring
The importance of the role of social media on the Arab uprisings has been largely debated. Some say that social media was the main instigator of the uprisings, while others claim that it was merely a tool. Either way, the perception of social media has changed; its role in the uprisings has demonstrated to the world its power. Such information allowed the world to stay updated with the protests and facilitated organising protests. Nine out of ten Egyptians and Tunisians responded to a poll that they used Facebook to organise protests and spread awareness.
Furthermore, 28% of Egyptians and 29% of Tunisians from the same poll said that blocking Facebook greatly hindered and/or disrupted communication. As of April 5, 2011, the amount of Facebook users in the Arabian nations surpassed 27.7 million people, indicating that the constant growth of people connected via social media acted as an asset where communication was concerned.
Others have argued that television, in specific the constant live televisions coverage by Al Jazeera and the sporadic live coverage of BBC News and others, was highly important for the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, and is also important in today’s Egypt crisis as the cameras provided exposure through live and real-time coverage.
Minorities are on the move
Many analysts, journalists, and involved parties have focused on the protests as being a uniquely Arab phenomenon, and indeed, protests and uprisings have been strongest and most wide-reaching in majority-Arabic-speaking countries, giving rise to the popular moniker of Arab Spring—a play on the so-called 1968 Prague Spring, a democratic awakening in what was then communist Czechoslovakia—to refer to protests, uprisings, and revolutions in those states. However, the international media has also noted the role of minority groups in many of these majority-Arab countries in the revolts. In Tunisia, the country’s small Jewish minority was initially divided by protests against Ben Ali and the government, but eventually came to identify with the protesters in opposition to the regime, according to the group’s president, who described Jewish Tunisians as “part of the revolution.”
While many in the Coptic minority in Egypt had criticised the Mubarak government for its failure to suppress Islamic extremists who attack the Coptic community, the prospect of these extremist groups taking over after its fall caused most Copts to avoid the protests, with then-Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria calling for them to end.
Because the uprisings and revolutions erupted first in North Africa before spreading to Asian Arab countries, and the Berbers of Libya participated massively in the protests and fought under Berber identity banners, some Berbers in Libya often see the revolutions of North Africa, west of Egypt, as a reincarnated Berber Spring.
Overall it is safe to say that the Arab spring will not bring any immediate results nor that the results will be similar in every country, so the idea that a democratic “spring” has come after the long “winter” of autocratic rule is nothing but a mere dream. Even the most optimistic observer cannot predict stability in those countries anytime soon.
So is the whole Arab spring a hoax? Has nothing changed? The answer is no, the Arab Spring may not have overturned the regional balance of power, but it has overturned popular expectations. The people of the Arab states have found their voices at last, yes their voices may look more like confused noise but it’s there. But these voices are so diverse and there are so many factors involved that it’s hard to predict where this roar of common people will finally lead.
