A decade into the Arab Spring: Will the hope that has become despair bring peace?

Exactly a week ago, Muhammad Boazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian from the small town of Sidi Bozid, woke up to another day of hard work and abuse by the authorities. After his claims were again rejected before the police and the rest of the corrupt government bodies in Tunisia, when all he wanted was to respectfully support his multi-sibling but orphaned father, he set himself on fire in the town square. Two and a half weeks later, on January 4, he was pronounced dead at the hospital. His sad story gave the signal for the outbreak of the famous Arab Spring events – which led to a widespread and dramatic wave of protests in almost all Middle Eastern countries.

Eventually, many will choose to call the wave of events “the Arab winter”, due to its controversial results, but it is impossible to argue about the great drama they brought with them. One can certainly doubt whether the changes that began with the story of the arson of the simple vegetable seller in Tunisia led to an improvement in the lives of the region’s residents, but probably everyone will agree that Middle Eastern history is divided into the period before and after the Arab Spring.

Elimination of dictators

Tunisia is the only country whose Arab Spring events have not dragged it into a brutal and bloody civil war. Ten days after the protests began, President Zin al-‘Abidin bin Ali went into exile in Saudi Arabia, after ruling the country at a high level for 23 years. The small country in North Africa which is known for its good and orderly political tradition has managed to hold democratic elections and move towards good years of prosperity. Many Arab and Middle Eastern countries can only look with envy at what is happening there to this day.

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In Egypt, on the other hand, things did not go so smoothly. Protests in the country, with the well-remembered photos of Tahrir Square in the center of the capital Cairo, began on January 25, 2011 against the backdrop of President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. The natural resentment that has permeated the hearts of the Egyptians for a long time has been joined by rumors and not unfounded assessments of Mubarak’s intention to bequeath power to his son Gamal. On February 11, Mubarak resigned to the cheers of the masses, but it seems that since the nightmare has only intensified.

In 2012, in the first democratic elections in Egyptian history, Muslim Brotherhood man Muhammad Morsi was elected. The Muslim Brotherhood movement has been assigned and even boycotted in Egypt since the days of the Free Officers ‘Revolution led by Gamal’ Abd al-Nasser in 1952, and suddenly gained the upper hand. Senior military officials did not like, to say the least, their rise to power and in 2013 took over again. Army Chief Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi went on to lead the de facto state, and soon after took off his uniform and was appointed president – winning an election campaign reminiscent of days gone by, with nearly 100 percent support. Since then, al-Sisi has ruled Egypt with a high hand, in blatant and reckless violation of all human and civil rights in the country. US President Donald Trump affectionately called him “my favorite dictator,” and the few freedoms that were still in Egypt before him are no more. The Egyptian story is almost the saddest, as the citizens of the country managed to feel how they are finally regaining control of their lives, however they soon fell from Igra Rama to Bira Amikata.

Libya and Yemen are the other countries that have experienced the Arab Spring upheavals even more. In Libya, the undisputed president who has ruled the country for decades, Muammar Gaddafi, was ousted, while in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Salah was ousted after 33 years in power. Since then, these two countries have been in terrible civil wars, which have claimed and still claim the lives and liberties of hundreds of thousands of people. In both countries many of the world and regional powers are involved, while expressing zero identification and consideration for basic human life values. In relation to them, apparently the Egyptians can really be satisfied with some of them.

The war that changed the Middle East

Until the outbreak of the Arab Spring events, Syria was considered one of the most prominent and important countries in the region. Against the backdrop of increasing protests in neighboring countries, a short graffiti inscription was discovered on March 6, 2011 in Daraa, a small and not very important city in the south of the country: “Doctor’s turn”. The caption, which turned out to be written by some of the city’s children, was aimed at the country’s president, Dr. Bashar al-Assad.

The war in Syria is one of the saddest stories ever written in the 21st century, with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the flight of millions more from the bleeding state. The terrible war led to the destruction of historic cities like Aleppo and Tadmor as well as many other cities across the country, alongside the regime’s relentless fighting against its citizens without any distinction of gender, age and committee, which included the use of chemical weapons. In addition, the war brought about a change in the order of power of the great powers in the Middle East.

The weakness of US President Barack Obama’s response, who avoided as much as possible endangering his troops in the terrible war, along with much of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initiative, has led Russia to push the United States out of the region significantly, joining a long process of increasing Putin’s involvement. Many in the region and in general, along with the strengthening of the American separatist trend, which continued even more during the reign of President Trump.

The millions of refugees who abandoned their homes in Syria and tried for their lives led to widespread changes in European reality as well. Against the background of years of difficult economic reality for many of the continent’s countries, the waves of refugees have swept the countries, brought heavy burdens on welfare services and led to a significant increase in unemployment rates. In addition, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has learned well how to exploit the suffering and plight of millions of refugees to his advantage, thus threatening EU countries with opening the gates and releasing the many refugees who will harm them. Since then, Erdogan continues to play his strongest card against Europe, thus succeeding in maintaining Turkey’s aggressive foreign policy, the like of which has not been seen since the heyday of the Ottoman Empire.

The great significance of the events of the Arab Spring in general and the difficult war in Syria in particular is the strengthening of Iranian expansion in the Middle East. Along with other countries, the Quds Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, led by his revered commander Qassem Suleimani, gained a significant foothold in Syria, and especially in the Syrian Golan Heights, coming to the border with Israel. The establishment of Shiite militias in Syria – whether Iranian, Syrian, Lebanese or otherwise – has led to a particularly significant change in the perception of Israeli security. The prevailing assumption is that the next major campaign will also be waged against an enemy from Syria alongside a confrontation with the enemy in Lebanon. The war between the wars that began as early as 2015 (at least then things were conducted in the usual secrecy), with thousands of air force attacks on a large selection of Iranian and pro-Iranian targets across the country, is the best evidence of this trend.

One of the most significant military elements that helped Assad’s army win the war and regain control of most of the country is the Lebanese Hezbollah organization. For several years, members of the organization fought in the battles of Syria, on the orders of the mother country of Iran. Although the organization suffered many blows and lost hundreds and possibly thousands of fighters, the organization’s commanders and fighters gained rich military experience (unlike IDF soldiers), as well as access to advanced weapons and ammunition in large quantities. In the next campaign in Lebanon.

The worst nightmare of all

Due to the severe war in Syria, as well as the loss of control of the neighboring country Iraq, we witnessed in the few years after the outbreak of the Arab Spring events the rise of ISIS – the organization that was a nightmare for many Middle Easterners and the world. The Salafi-Jihadist terrorist organization took advantage of the region’s crash and the large and significant governmental vacuum created in it to establish the Great Caliphate, which in its heyday controlled a population of about six million people.

The extremist ideas of the organization’s members, who studied jihadist theory in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and other notorious places, along with the virtuosity and spectacularity of the murderous craft that spread around the world with the help of their advanced media departments, fascinated many young Muslims and non-Muslims around the world. Tens of thousands of people from most European countries, the United States and Canada, along with many countries in the Middle East, have joined the brutal war machine. The organization, which has become the number one enemy of all countries in the world, has led to their impressive mobilization, along with a special mobilization of the NATO member states to deal with it and has even led to some cooperation between the United States and Iran.

The organization is currently in a slump, after being defeated militarily and losing all of its territorial strongholds in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, the ideas he promoted are far from defeat and still pose a significant danger to the region and the world. In the temporary prison camps in northeastern Syria, tens of thousands of children who know nothing but suffering and a desire to realize the vision of jihad are growing up in unconditional conditions. The countries of the world treat the issue of ISIS women and children like a hot potato and no one is willing to pay attention to the fact that the next generation of terrorists of the organization is developing unhindered in the camps. In the dynamic and volatile reality of the Middle East it can certainly be assumed that they will be privileged to realize their cruel plans.

Arab Spring 2.0

In the last two years we have witnessed a resurgence of protest movements throughout the Middle East. In 2019, countries that did not seem to take part in the wave of events of 2011 came to the fore, including Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria and Sudan. It would not be unreasonable to state that the protest movements that began in the Middle East in 2011 also gave their signals in these countries, where it probably took several years of brewing to carry out the feelings of insurgency.

In 2019, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Botflika and Omar al-Bashir were deposed in Algeria and Sudan respectively. The two were harsh and cruel dictators who had ruled their countries with a high hand for several decades. Large and widespread popular protests involving hundreds of thousands of people led to the fall of the dictators, and it is highly doubtful that this would have been possible without the events of the Arab Spring. It is still too early to determine, but it is to be hoped that this is a significant step by these countries towards advancing the democratic process in them. In this context, it is important to note that the normalization agreement between Israel and Sudan, while removing it from the list of pro-terrorist countries, would probably not have been possible under the rule of al-Bashir, which welcomed the various terrorist organizations.

Two other countries experiencing shaky protests since 2019 are Lebanon and Iraq. In two, waves of uprising erupted a little over a year ago, against the backdrop of government corruption and rather poor government services. Pretty soon, calls also came into the picture to reduce Iran’s control over the countries – which operate in them through emissary forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hezbollah battalions and other organizations in Iraq. The process of Iranian expansion in the region, which has progressed significantly as aforesaid due to the fighting in Syria, has led to its enormous control, indirectly, of Baghdad and Beirut.

The Martyrs’ Square in Beirut and Tahrir Square in Baghdad were filled day after day with thousands of people protesting against the government, until they were slightly discontinued due to severe Corona restrictions. Recently, the resumption of protests in both countries can be identified. It is not certain that it is worth building on the fall of the regimes there, as it seems that the demonstrators themselves do not know what they want to achieve. It is not to be expected that Iran will show good will and leave on its own initiative, nor is it to be expected that a personnel change in the positions of government will lead to a fundamental change in the country.

The events of the Arab Spring that began about a decade ago have brought about a fundamental and dramatic change in the Middle East as we have known it until then. The processes driven by the waves of protests and revolutions are still far from over and it will be interesting to see how they progress over the years. The movements that arose due to real distress and oppression experienced by the citizens in the various countries led to a great burst of hope and vision. In a few places as mentioned, success has certainly been recorded, but in many Middle Eastern countries, hope and optimism have been replaced by rivers of immense blood and despair.

Despite this, it may not yet be time to say desperate, as the Middle East is the most dynamic and changing region in the world. Alongside the difficult wars one can recognize the dove of peace coming from the least expected places. Hopefully she’s here to signal to us the coming of spring.