[Hurriyet Daily News] The so-called Arab Spring came to an end wherever it assumed to take place. It ended in Egypt with a military coup and drove Libya into a bloody chaos. Tunisia is presented as the only success story, but in fact it is far from having a happy ending but rather had a forced consensus. Last but not least, the debacle of Syria displays the dark side of the so-called "spring."
That’s not to say that the above mentioned countries have had agreeable regimes and that they did not have considerable opposition. The point is that the popular movements which have been branded as democratic revolts had nothing to do with democratic struggles - with the exception of the existence of a handful number of democrats who supported them. The Islamist takeover in Egypt was not a surprise, since the pillar of the anti-government movement was the Moslem Brüderbund. It is no surprise that it led to civil war between Islamist militias in Libya, since the regime was displaced by foreign intervention in the absence of a democratic opposition. Even in Tunisia, the strongest opposition has been the so-called "good Islamists" under the leadership of Rached Ghannouchi, who is no more than an advocate of "Islamic democracy." Finally, even he had to be pressured to compromise in order to avoid social unrest, and his only wisdom had been to surrender to domestic and foreign pressures.
Despite that the Syrian spring was assumed to have started with peaceful democratic opposition against the regime, it is no surprise that it turned into a civil war, since the tiny democratic opposition objected to the armed struggle from the beginning. Nevertheless, the international community turned a blind eye to those who advocated peaceful transition and instead supported gangs against the regime. Nobody wanted to inquire the true identity of those gunnies who started fierce war against Bashir al-Assad’s regime, since they were assumed "to wage a just war against a brutal dictatorship." It was not questioned on how they obtained weapons and the financial and logistic support. Finally, it became clear that it indeed is a proxy war between regional and international powers, between those who support the regime and others who are determined to realize a regime change. |