There are few or no celebrations planned for the tenth anniversary of the uprisings that swept the Arab world in late 2010 and early 2011. There are days when television screens were filled with crowds chanting “The other people call for the overthrow of the regime. “to be ancient history. The first hopes of a revolutionary replacement have collapsed in the face of the brutal force of military coups, civil wars and fractured states. In 2021, there are few ideals more universally shared than that the Arab uprisings have failed.
It is easy to perceive the appeal of this idea, ardently promoted by autocratic regimes as well as foreign policy realists. This means getting back to normal. The Obama and Trump administrations tacitly accepted this view when they turned their gaze to other goals in the region: the former toward nuclear negotiations with Iran, the latter toward normalizing Arab relations with Israel.
However, this conviction is, in fact, only the latest in a series of inopportune conclusions. Before 2011, most analysts took the stability of Arab autocracies for granted. That mistake. As popular tension drove four lifelong dictators: Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, some observers were quick to speculate that an unstoppable democratic wave had arrived; others warned that democratization would open the door to Islamist domination. They were both wrong. In 2012, the ultimate idea ended the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2013, supporters of the Egyptian military’s coup argued that it would put the country back on the path to democracy. He is still wrong.
In the heat of revolutionary action ten years ago, it felt as if the region had been replaced forever. The autocratic wall of concern had harmed autonomous Arab citizens destined never to tolerate authoritarian rule again. Within a few years, however, those hopes were dashed. An army coup in Egypt put an end to its fledgling democratic experiment. Fragile transitions in Libya and Yemen have turned into a civil war. Syria has sunk into a nightmare combination of insurgency and war of foreign power. Eventually, autocrats throughout the region regained the maximum strength they had. he had lost.
However, the consensus that the Arab uprisings ended in failure is equally ill-timed and is very likely to prove false over time. The effects of uprisings deserve not to be measured in overthrown regimes or democratic elections, their record is not insignificant. The fact that dictators are once again sitting on the thrones of the Middle East is far from proving that the uprisings have failed. Democracy was only one component of the protesters’ demands. it only resulted in corruption, disastrous rule and economic failure.
By this standard, the uprisings have profoundly reshaped each and every size of Arab politics, adding individual attitudes, political systems, ideologies, and foreign relations. Superficial similarities may mask the magnitude of the change, but today’s Middle East would be unrecognizable to observers in 2010. The forces set in motion in 2011 virtually guarantee that in the next decade there will be even deeper transformations, adjustments that will confuse any policy based on a return to old habits.
After a decade of dashed hopes, it’s simple how hard and unexpected the revolutionary moment that began in December 2010 was. By the end of 2010, it was evident that the Arab world was experiencing growing popular frustration and growing economic inequality, but the region’s leaders believed they were capable of crushing any potential threat. The same has happened with the academics who examine them and the activists who confront them.
No one was prepared for the scale, speed and intensity of the protests that erupted across the region. Arab satellite TV channels like Al Jazeera and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have accelerated the process, temporarily transmitting images, concepts and feelings across borders. Regimes that were well prepared for remote local unrest were defeated by the large number of citizens who took to the streets and did not leave. When some armies refused to kill for their besieged presidents, the other people proclaimed victory.
These victories in Tunisia and Egypt, where mass protests succeeded in driving out entrenched autocrats and preparing the ground for elections, have galvanized protesters in other Arab countries. It is difficult to locate the magic of the time, the new sense of network formed in the chaos of Tahrir Square in Cairo, the Pearl Rotunda in Bahrain, Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunisia and The Place of Change in Yemen. Anything is possible. Inevitable change. The autocrats were afraid, and nothing, neither the support of the U. S. military, nor the probably all-powerful security services, nor the fears and divisions of the protesters, can prevent the movement.
But no other country has followed in the footsteps of the Tunisian and Egyptian pioneers. Regional powers defeated the old regimes in their efforts to destroy the uprisings, and the West did nothing to prevent them. Poor governments like Jordan and Morocco have relied on the monetary and political gulf monarchies to deal with their own smaller protest movements, while adopting modest constitutional reforms to appease their citizens. The Bahraini monarchy violently crushed its nascent popular anti-government uprising, unleashing a wave of sectarian repression. of his army opposed the protesters, triggering an immediate escalation that resulted in civil war and foreign intervention. Yemen has fallen into a long and bloody stalemate as its army split after months of protests.
As conflicts dragged on and revolutionary momentum faded, the overwhelming army and monetary merit of the top regimes prevailed. The surviving governments sought revenge, punishing activists who had dared to challenge their power. Their goal was to repair worry and destroy hope. The United States has done little to stand in the way. When the Egyptian military overthrew President-elect Mohamed Morsi and massacred many protesters in central Cairo, Obama’s leadership even refused to call the occasion a coup.
Nowhere has this change of fortune been more evident than in Syria. What began as a nonviolent protest movement opposed to the Assad government slowly turned into a civil war as the regime violently cracked down on protesters. The degeneration of the country in conflict has entailed incalculable costs. Piles of thousands of dead, millions of refugees, the spread of a virulent new bureaucracy of sectarianism and a revitalized jihadist movement. The horrors of Syria have provided a useful scarecrow for autocrats. you go back to the street.
By 2013, largely due to Syria’s descent into chaos and the coup d’état of the Egyptian army opposed to Morsi, a new consensus had been established. The autocrats had won, the uprisings had failed, and the Arab Spring had become the Arab winter.
Few other dynamics better illustrate the transformative effects of the uprisings than the fortunes of classical Islamist groups. Originally hailed as vital actors in new democratic systems, many were repressed through resurgent autocracies or struggled to navigate in transitional democracies. This arc further reinforced the sense that the uprisings had failed.
In the decade before 2011, Islamists linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s, were the dominant opposition force in many Arab countries. Their organizational skills, ability to provide social services, reputation for integrity and attractiveness have made them a formidable political force. Beginning in the 1990s, Muslim Brotherhood intellectuals produced elaborate arguments for Islam’s compatibility with democracy and criticized the autocratic rule of existing secular regimes.
Islamists played no significant role in the early days of the uprisings. In Tunisia, the government has largely excluded such teams from public life. In Egypt, they belatedly joined the Tahrir Square protests. However, when the opportunities presented themselves, islamists temporarily entered the political arena. Tunisia’s Ennahda party and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood won big victories in the countries’ first transitional elections. Morocco’s equivalent, the Justice and Development Party, formed a series of governments after its electoral victories in 2011 and 2016. Libyan Islamists have also joined the electoral game, with less success. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood played a key organizational role, most commonly from abroad, in the uprising opposed to Assad. In 2012, Islamists appeared to be winning the game.
But those teams have proven to be hot targets for autocratic repression and regional force policies. The post-2011 anti-democratic backlash has been commercialized in the West through regimes in part as a reaction to an alleged Islamist takeover. The Egyptian military used arguments like this to legitimize its July 2013 coup and the violent and radical repression that followed. In Tunisia, the Ennahda component has practiced a strategy of self-control; its prime minister resigned in favor of a technocrat to short-circuit an increasingly intense political conflict. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), either of which saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a risk and representative of Qatar, began cracking down on the motion and declaring it a terrorist organization. In reaction, Qatar and Turkey have stepped up their aid to the group, welcoming members fleeing Egyptian repression and helping branches still active in Lithrougha and elsewhere.
Instead of winning the democratic game, the top Islamist teams have failed thanks to their own mistakes and government repression. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and most influential of those teams, no longer exists in a recognizable form. Tens of thousands of its members are in prison, its remaining leaders have died or gone into exile, and their cash has been confiscated through the Egyptian government. In Jordan, the government has come a long way toward dismantling the Muslim Brotherhood, leaving it fragmented and divided. The Justice and Development Party has lost its luster after years of rule under pressure from the king. Ennahda in Tunisia has ostensibly repudiated Islamism and renamed itself the Muslim Democracy Party. Mainstream political Islam is now a shadow of its former self.
Violent Islamism is another story. Al-Qaeda and its ilk were first caught off guard during the uprisings. The immediate fate of nonviolent protests made the argument that only violent jihad can bring about a replacement seem excessive. But the war in Syria stored them. At the beginning of the conflict, Assad freed a group of jihadists from the criminal in an effort to paint the war as a fight against terrorism. They were subsequently recruited by remnants of what was then the Islamic State in Iraq, which moved some of its leaders and fighters to Syria to join the war against Assad. As the uprising turned into an insurgency, governments inside and outside the region funneled weapons and money to the insurgent groups. Although Western governments have tried to control and direct aid to moderate partners, others have shown little restraint. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have funneled aid to armed Islamist outfits and tolerated personal money for the conflict. This budget was overwhelmingly spent on the most outsized teams, tipping the internal balance of the insurgency.
The setback came here temporarily. In 2013, jihadists in Syria were first divided by the declaration of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, but then the organization temporarily turned its weapons against the rest of the opposition. ISIS swept through eastern Syria and western Iraq, erasing the border and theatrically signaling the new caliphate. Their smart social media campaigns and incredibly apocalyptic messages, coupled with the military’s demonstrable success, have drawn tens of thousands of supporters to their ranks and encouraged attacks abroad. The dominant Islamist movements have now discovered themselves. caught between their long-standing rejection of violent jihad and their voters’ enthusiasm for teams like ISIS. How can the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood continue to call for nonviolent policies when its voter turnout resulted only in fierce repression and organizational disaster, while ISIS violence was generating surprising results?
A decade after they began, the uprisings have radically reshaped Islamist movements. The fortunes of organizations that participated in formal electoral politics soared and then collapsed. In contrast, the jihadists have suffered serious setbacks and remain a viable political and ideological force: with few dominant movements. remaining as protective valves and entrenched conflicts that provide sufficient opportunities for mobilization, there are likely to be more jihadist insurgencies.
It’s not just Islamist teams that have noticed a change in their fortunes as a result of the uprisings. The protesters’ democratic aspirations appeared to point to a new role for the United States, a role that could stick to U. S. President Barack Obama’s famous speech in Cairo. promising a “new beginning” for U. S. relations with the region. The reality, however, was different.
The Arab uprisings challenged the entire US-backed order, accelerating Washington’s withdrawal from the region. The withdrawal has many causes, adding the fiasco of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, shifts in dependence on power, the strategic desire to pivot to Asia, and internal distaste for remote wars. policies at odds with Washington’s and inviting global competition like China and Russia to the once-unipolar region.
It is possible that greater U. S. accession willthe uprisings have simply helped to entrench more democratic transitions. But the Obama administration’s efforts have proved lukewarm and ineffective, leaving activists simultaneously feeling betrayed and autocratic allies abandoned. The administration’s reluctance to act more forcefully in Syria and its In our minds, the pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran has further alienated America’s autocratic partners. USA As a result, for much of the past decade, America’s putative allies have been able to do so. The US, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have blatantly opposed it. to U. S. policies.
In contrast, Trump’s management shared those allies’ worldview, adding their contempt for Arab democracy and the Iran deal. But his policies have not been more reassuring. President Donald Trump’s lack of response to Iran’s 2019 missile attack on the Abqaiq oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. , for example, which halted only about five percent of global oil production, surprised the region. As for the maximum regional issues, the U. S. under Trump he seemed to have no policy at all. As the presence of EE. su own nascent new order.
Some parts of this regional choice formula are familiar. The death of a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution has been long overdue. The struggle between Iran and its Sunni Arab rivals has metastasized but follows the familiar contours of the early years of the century. Iran has a greater use of proxy forces, specifically in Iraq and Syria, retaining its regional influence despite the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the “maximum pressure” crusade. Tehran’s attack on Abqaiq sent a message to the Gulf states that a possible clash would be costly. The constant crusade of attacks on U. S. forces in Iraq through Iranian-backed Shiite militias has even led to the U. S. secretary of state being able to attack the U. S. secretary of state in Iraq. U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to warn that the U. S. The U. S. can simply abandon its embassy in Baghdad, an old Iranian dream.
The real change in the post-uprising region is the emergence of a fault within the Sunni world that spans the Gulf, the Levant and North Africa. With the United States on the sidelines or obsessed with Iran, Sunni aspirants to Arab leadership, such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, have fought in proxy conflicts on the regional map. These competing Sunni blocs have supported rival teams in virtually any and all political transitions and civil wars, turning local political competitions into opportunities for regional competition. The effects have been devastating: Egyptian and Tunisian political fracture, collapse of the post-Gaddafi Libyan transition, and divided Syrian opposition.
It is in this polarized landscape that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has gone astray like a wild elephant. MBS, as the crown prince is widely known, came to strength in 2015 by ignoring his rivals and intimidating potential warring parties with abandonment. then, it has introduced a series of disastrous foreign policy measures. He introduced an intervention in Yemen that temporarily plunged into a quagmire and humanitarian catastrophe, strangely detained the Lebanese prime minister and allegedly ordered the killing of opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi. it broke Saudi Arabia’s global position.
Nothing better illustrates the erratic patterns of this newly multipolar Middle East than Qatar’s Blockade of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2017, introduced in reaction to Qatar’s planned aid to terrorist groups. The diplomatic dispute has torn apart the Gulf Cooperation Council, once the region’s top effective multilateral body, and hampered U. S. efforts. The U. S. to build a unified anti-Iran front. Instead of succumbing to pressure, Qatar has only relied on Iranian and Turkish aid, American cover (Doha is home to the huge Al Udeid airbase, which is used through the United States), and its own vast monetary resources. Regardless, the blockade has settled into a new semi-permanent, but not especially dangerous, reality, with tensions manifesting themselves basically through the proxy festival in Liviaa, Sudan and elsewhere. the inability of the United States to force its allies to their differences and cooperate vis-à-vis Iran shows how much its influence has fallen since 20 11
This dispute within the Gulf, moreover, has invited a competitive Turkish bid for regional leadership. In northern Syria, the Turkish military has redrawn the region’s de facto borders and exerted enough pressure on U. S. -backed Kurdish outfits to force U. S. troops to withdraw. Turkey has followed this good fortune with a competitive intervention in Lithrougha aimed at countering the Egyptians and Emiratis by Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the armed forces opposing the interim government identified through Turkey and other foreign powers. The expansion of Turkey’s military, closer ties with Qatar and because Sunni teams that defected through Saudi Arabia crystallized a new regional axis that cuts the division between Shiites and Sunnis.
The United States has been virtually invisible in most of those conflicts. Under Trump, whose management was obsessed with Iran and detached from the nuances of regional politics, Washington has largely disappeared as a major player, even in spaces like Iraq and Syria. where U. S. troops remain deployed. Far from encouraging democratic revival or even protecting human rights, Trump chose to rely on America’s autocratic partners, hoping that they will simply forget public opinion and forge an open alliance with Israel. Israel’s newly formalized relations with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Israel’s broader efforts in the Gulf to attack Iran, offer some justification for this approach. However, in the absence of U. S. mediation. In the U. S. elsewhere, interventions through regional actors have spread existing conflicts, without regard to the well-being of others on the ground. Although the combatants have long since lost sight of their original objective, active and entrenched violence persists, which is maintained thanks to regional interference and local war economies.
Despite the unwelcome obituary and dark legacy of the Arab uprising, the revolutionary wave of 2011 is not a passing mirage. Ten years later, the region’s autocratic façade is cracking again. until the overthrow of the long-time Sudanese leader and defied sectarian political orders in Iraq and Lebanon. Lebanon has a government slightly after a year of protests, a currency crisis and the fallout from an incomprehensible explosion in beirut’s port. Saudi Arabia has noticed immediate adjustments in the house as it prepares for MBS’s supposed actual rise.
Were the victory of the autocrats not meant to repair stability?Weren’t the Arab audiences defeated, exhausted, and desperate? In reality, what seemed like an end was just another circular of a relentless cycle. Regimes that were poised to offer stability were, in fact, the number one reasons for the instability. It was their corruption, autocracy, bad governance, rejection of democracy and human rights violations that led other people to rebel. Once the uprisings began, their violent repression fueled internal polarization and civil war. , while exacerbating corruption and economic hardship. As long as those regimes form the backbone of the regional order, there will be no stability.
Further outbreaks of mass protests now seem inevitable. There are too many points of political instability for even the most draconian regime to remain in place indefinitely. The COVID-19 pandemic, collapsing oil costs and a sharp relief in remittances have accumulated new and intense pressures on already disastrously weak economies. Dormant wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen continue to spew out refugees, weapons and extremism while attracting outside intervention. And things can get worse. The tense stalemate between the U. S. The US and Iran may suddenly turn into a hot war, or the collapse of the Palestinian Authority may cause another intifada.
That is why, despite all their claims, the maximum autocratic regimes in the region exude palpable insecurity. The Egyptian government is crushing every conceivable symptom of popular unrest. Ankara has never recovered from the trauma of a failed coup attempt in 2016. Iran’s leaders are obsessed with outdoor attempts to foment unrest as they struggle to cope with economic sanctions. Even the government of the United Arab Emirates, where there have been few symptoms of internal instability, has surprised by arresting a British educator for alleged espionage. These are not the behaviors of self-confident governments. For them, the lesson of 2011 is that existential threats, such as democracy, can arise from anywhere, at any time. Their paranoia, in turn, pushes them exactly toward the policies that fuel popular discontent. And thanks to nearly a década. de repression by the top government, civil society and political establishments that could normally channel popular frustration no longer exist. When that anger inevitably overflows, it will be more dramatic than ever.
Future protests are unlikely to resemble the 2011 uprisings. The region has replaced too much. Autocrats have learned to co-opt, disrupt, and defeat challengers. Internal unrest or regional contagion is unlikely to catch regimes off guard, and governments are less likely to run in chorus by force in the early stages of protest. But potential protesters have also learned valuable lessons. Although autocratic successes have left many Arab audiences demoralized and broken, recent revolutionary movements in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan have shown that the camp and commitment remain. In all 4 countries, citizens have proven capable of carrying out a non-violent mobilization. for months despite repression and provocations.
The political environment in the Middle East has also polarized into competing axes, blocking the kind of transnational identity that allowed Arab uprisings to spread so easily. Unlike 2011, there is no unified Arab audience. The regional media, once a source of unity, has fragmented. Al Jazeera is now seen as a partisan tool of Qatari politics, not a platform for shared debate. Meanwhile, Arab social networks have been deeply colonized through data warfare, bots and malware, creating a poisonous environment in which new ideological coalitions are suffering to merge. But as the interactions between the Algerian and Sudanese protesters and the tenacity of the Iraqi and Lebanese movements suggest, those difficulties are surmountable.
Compared to 2011, the foreign environment is now less open to a revolutionary wave, but it is also less to save it. While the Obama leadership struggled to reconcile democratic values with strategic interests, the Trump leadership fully supported regional autocrats and shared their contempt. for popular protest. Today no one in the Middle East will turn to Washington for signs or advice. Arab regimes and protesters perceive that they are alone.
To say that a new wave of uprisings is coming does not mean to subscribe to a deterministic view of history in which the right would inevitably triumph. Far from it. Uprisings will ensue, and when they do, they will possibly break existing orders as 2011 did not.
But for all the huge untapped prospect of the young Middle Eastern population, there is little explanation for why to be positive about Middle Eastern customers. Nor will there be a simple automatic reset when President-elect Joe Biden takes office. The axis of the Gulf states and Israel, negotiated through Trump, will likely resist any slow change in U. S. policy. USA Iran will not accept U. S. commitments as true. U. S. in the short term. The refugees will not return soon. Jihadist insurgencies will continue to locate tactics to regenerate. If you don’t learn another lesson from 2011, it’s that the Middle East is far beyond the controlling capacity of any outside power.