Was the Arab Spring really a bad idea?

During the Arab leaders’ summit that convened in Jordan at the end of last month, several speakers condemned the so-called Arab Spring in their statements at the official session.

They blamed it for the raging conflicts and the spreading violence in many parts of the Arab world.

Many analysts, mainly Arab, blame the Arab Spring, too. Some castigate it as an anarchic upheaval that only disrupted the existing order, replacing it with strife and violent turmoil.

Others dub it as a Western colonial, Zionist conspiracy that seeks the destruction of the Arab world by inciting sectarian violence, igniting civil wars, supporting or even creating extremist terrorist groups such as Daesh and the many other organisations that commit unprecedented and indiscriminate terrorist crimes in the name of Islam.

Undeniably, the current situation in many parts of the Arab world is exactly like this. 

Most of the Arab countries hit by the Arab Spring six years ago are yet to recover from the miserable and bloody anarchy they since descended into.

Equally evident is that the now trouble-stricken countries such as Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq were apparently safe, politically stable, violence-free and all their population, including religious and ethnic communities, were secure under the rule of law in the former dictatorships.

Although the difference between what was then and what evolved since is rather impossible to overlook, it still is hard to determine that the former individual dictatorial and despotic rule — one person rules over an entire nation and governs the lives of all the people — was right and sustainable, and liable to last endlessly.
The time for despots, even “benevolent despots” who ruled singularly but served their countries and peoples very well, is long past. 

The normal requirements for the preservation of the natural principles of human dignity and individual rights include equality, justice, power-sharing in democratic setups where every citizen counts.

The toppled dictatorships did indeed provide general security — not necessarily for everyone — services, as well as other essential citizen needs, but that did not include dignity and other basic human and political rights.

The problem is that the toppled dictatorships were not replaced with democracies, as initially hoped. They were, as reproached, replaced mostly by chaos that has created much worse situations and misery than before. 

Hence the plausible association of the aggravation with the advent of the Arab Spring.

But it is unfair to condemn the Arab Spring, which has simply been mishandled and fiercely resisted internally and externally.

The title “Arab Spring” was not meant to compliment the uprisings that started in Tunisia and quickly swept across the Arab region as much as it was an indicative term to refer to the sudden awakening of a region that lagged behind, succumbing submissively to decades of ruthless and corrupt dictatorships that most of the rest of the world had rejected and ended. As democratic rule was rare in the Arab region, the series of genuine and peaceful popular uprisings demanding real political reform, dignity, democracy, good governments and freedom from oppression attracted world attention if not also appreciation.

At the same time, the sudden surge caused consternation and fear, and thus mobilised counter currents that also acted fiercely to protect their “acquired rights” under the targeted autocracies.

Many factions within the affected states, other countries in the region as well as many foreign elements joined forces to curb the sudden trend in favour of protecting the convenient, even if stagnant, status quo.

Some in the region loathed democratisation as a threat to their own rule. Foreign elements also feared change for possible, even certain, ominous consequences to their secure interests and the interests of their client state, Israel.

Conspiracy or no conspiracy, it is an approved fact that there are influential external forces and study centres linked to Israel that work hard to keep the Arab world divided and weak, lagging behind, easy to manipulate, compliant and managed in manners suitable to Israeli designs and consolidation of its aggressive illegal gains and conquests.

The Iraq war in 2003 was a direct outcome of that conspiracy. 

What has been happening in Iraq since is not related to the Arab Spring.

However, it is hard to imagine that the spark that ignited the Tunisian rebellion was started by conspirators or, for that matter, that the Egyptian, Yemeni and Syrian moves were orchestrated beforehand with conspirators.

Efforts to infiltrate and to divert all the national Arab uprisings were evident. 

Some succeeded, either fuelling permanent chaos, such as in Libya and Syria, or by partly restoring the old order.

If the Arab Spring has generally failed, ending up by precipitating disorder, violence, civil wars, insecurity, devastation, refugee problems and massive loss of innocent life, it is not because it was a bad idea; rather, it was because it was massively sabotaged by an overwhelming combination of forces that ended up winning the battle, albeit for a while, against reform.

Peoples’ quest for liberation, freedom from oppression and political rights can never be wrong, but it can go wrong, as in the case of the Arab Spring.

History offers many examples of legitimate revolutions that were crushed by counter forces.

In this region, we may have to wait much longer before the prevailing misery would end. But it will. It is primarily an Arab responsibility to put an end to the violent chaos.

Conspiracies exist all the time. They only succeed when they find cracks to sneak through or collaborators and opportunists to work with. 

Only proper democracies create strong internal fronts that conspiracies find hard to penetrate.

The quest for democratisation is an inevitability that can hardly fade away.