The Arab Spring was a pro-democracy movement and a series of uprisings that broke the mould in Middle Eastern history, but its momentum didn’t last long before the region reversed into its autocratic and divided state. In both North Africa and the Middle East, by 2010, protestors fought for deep regime changes, for cultural freedom, and for democracy in their nations. First Tunisia and Egypt and then by domino effect, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and many others followed motivated by the short-term successes they saw in neighboring nations.
Initially, it seemed that in that window of two years, real change was coming into the region. Within the first two months of 2011, both Tunisia and Egypt had toppled two autocratic regimes. The Egyptian President was driven out of the country when he lost the support from the military, and power fell into the hands of a council of senior military officers. This new military administration was very popular, and reluctantly held democratic elections later in 2011, developing a utopia of sorts. Similar toppling of historic dictatorships and autocrats happened in countries like Syria; in fact the only country who was fully unsuccessful in doing so was Bahrain. There was also now a newly politically active youth which these countries hadn’t seen much of before; they were now using their voices to alter their own lives and re-gain autonomy. Social media quickly became a massive tool in raising awareness about countries whose oppressed citizens were often neglected by the media. At surface level, it appeared that the Arab Spring was successful.
However, it takes little analysis to realize the catastrophic impacts associated with the uprisings. The instability brought about by the dramatic and sudden shifts in government arguably led to the civil wars that have cost countless lives and resources. We can take Libya, for example, where the Spring deposed one of their leaders of forty years, Muammar Gaddafi, leaving the country extremely unstable and with little guidance into a new form of government. The tragedy of the Syrian civil war started in March of 2011, at the climax of the revolution. Although the former government had been extremely repressive and had violated human rights on many accounts, the chaos left behind in the process of hastily overthrowing them has caused the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century as of yet. The war in Syria is based on a variety of alternative parties trying to fight against the Baathist Republic, with support domestically and internationally which only intensifies the brutality and scale of the crisis. The repressive regimes in government prior to the Arab Spring were also harmful to their citizens, and so it was probably only a matter of time before disorder emerged in these nations, but it’s worth analysing whether the outcomes of the revolutions were worth the sufferance of nearly a million people who have died in these wars across the Middle East. It is also important to note that the countries which aren’t currently in a civil war have consequently reversed back into the oppressive governments they started with prior to 2010. Egypt had overthrown the long-ruling Mubarak regime during the Arab Spring and elected Mohamed Morsi in 2012 in their place. By 2013, he was overthrown in a coup by the leader still present today, President Sisi. Sisi constantly faces criticism for his violence against opposition, denial of critical media, and his militaristic strategy with activists.
The fact that a lot of the Arab governments either had a dramatic structural or ideological switch, or were launched into a civil war, meant that Islamic radicalism became increasingly popular. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden shift to liberalism in many nations, and war always provides an outlet for violent political groups. The Syrian civil war, for example, helped breed the horror of ISIS as their members keep attempting to seize power amongst the chaos. Though Tunisia was the only nation fully successful in the process of the revolutions, their brief periods of readjustment have also been taken advantage of by ISIS. Yemen and Libya face struggles with Al Qaeda and its associated organisation Ansar Al Sharia. The distraction of governments by the disorder makes them all the more vulnerable to these groups and it seems most of these nations are still struggling to keep them under control.
We can also see that in hindsight, perhaps the Arab world was not ready for modern democracy if it faced this much resistance and was so short-lived in the majority of these nations. The aspirations of the younger generation were quickly silenced, and appear to be the minority. Democracy seems far from achievable when countries are struggling to unite. If anything, the inability for countries to stay stable after this shift to the left has granted traditionalist autocrats the narrative that they are the only form of government that can maintain law and order, even if that may cost the preservation of liberty and human rights. Foreign nations, extending far outside of the region, have started siding with different governments and countries within all of these wars, turning what was supposed to be a miraculous, utopic change in society into a bloody, petty ,and partisan issue.
Despite all this criticism being true, all revolutions take time, so many historians believe we need to wait for the aftermath to play out—after all it has not even been a decade yet. Looking from where we stand today, although the Arab Spring functioned effectively to bring about short-term fuel for future change, it has also brought about a renewed form of repression and tighter control from autocrats on their citizens while simultaneously sacrificing hundreds of thousands of innocent lives for what seems to currently be amounting to little change.
