Help promote human rights in the Middle East and North Africa

Donate Today
Facebook-f Twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube Envelope
Search
Close
  • English
  • العربية
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
    • Support Dawn
    • Work With Us
    • For the Media
  • Founder Jamal Khashoggi
    • Who Was Jamal Khashoggi?
    • Chronology of a Murder
    • UN Recommendations
    • International Reaction
    • In His Own Words
    • DAWN and Jamal
  • Countries
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Israel-Palestine
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
  • Democracy In Exile
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines for Democracy in Exile
  • Advocacy
    • DAWN's Advocacy
    • The Lobbyist Hall of Shame
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
    • Reforming Foreign Policy
      • Aid Conditionality
      • Human Rights Go to War
    • US Foreign Policy in MENA
    • Joint Advocacy
  • Experts
  • Latest
Menu
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • What We Do
    • Who We Are
    • FAQs
    • Support Dawn
    • Work With Us
    • For the Media
  • Founder Jamal Khashoggi
    • Who Was Jamal Khashoggi?
    • Chronology of a Murder
    • UN Recommendations
    • International Reaction
    • In His Own Words
    • DAWN and Jamal
  • Countries
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Egypt
    • UAE
    • Israel-Palestine
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
  • Democracy In Exile
    • About
    • Submission Guidelines for Democracy in Exile
  • Advocacy
    • DAWN's Advocacy
    • The Lobbyist Hall of Shame
    • DAWN's Culprits Gallery
    • Reforming Foreign Policy
      • Aid Conditionality
      • Human Rights Go to War
    • US Foreign Policy in MENA
    • Joint Advocacy
  • Experts
  • Latest
Donate

The Arab Uprisings in Retro and Prospect

February 20, 2021
in Democracy In Exile, Saudi Arabia
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Joost Hiltermann

Joost Hiltermann is Middle East & North Africa Program Director at the International Crisis Group.

Revolutions can take decades to show their full transformative impact, but in the case of the Middle East and North Africa, the popular uprisings that coursed through the region beginning in late 2010 have failed to fulfil any of their early promises ten years on.

Instead, with the possible exception of Tunisia, they have only made things worse: several countries descended into chaos and civil war; in others, sitting regimes strengthened their hold on power or, suffering an initial defeat, returned with a vengeance, a brutal Tweedledum making way for a vicious Tweedledee.

In 2011, protesters flooded into the streets and squares calling for social justice, jobs, and an end to nepotism, state-sponsored bribery, and the daily indignities inflicted by a highly intrusive security apparatus. They wanted dramatically better governance and, failing that, the overthrow of unresponsive and corrupt regimes. Today, they have achieved none of their core objectives. While the uprisings saw the downfall of long-time autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, social and economic conditions throughout the region remained largely unaltered, or grew worse.

Yet it would be premature to write off the uprisings as momentary spasms of popular discontent. Years from now, we may well come to see them as merely the starting shot for a profound social transformation, one that the region so sorely needs.

There are signs that what happened a decade ago was not a simple one-off. First, there is the occurrence in 2019-2020 of a new wave of mass protests – in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon, all countries that the earlier storm had passed by. These underlined how popular grievances and demands are similar and pervasive throughout the region, and that people, lacking institutional means of political expression, are still ready to raucously raise their complaints and calls for change in public squares.

Then there is the fact that the surviving regimes have drawn all the wrong lessons from the experience. Instead of addressing people's legitimate grievances, they have doubled down on repression, entrenching their security states. Today, the same coercive, unaccountable, unresponsive regimes, or their carbon-copy successors, remain in charge, facing the selfsame economic and social challenges, possessing as few workable answers to these as before. The latest events in Tunisia, where people once again took to the streets, underline how the region's ruling elites and the outdated social contracts they uphold endure even in a country whose transition into a more open political system has been the region's only point of light, and how this may be prompting cycles of contestation.

It is difficult to see how this profound region-wide malaise can continue, for how much longer these near-comatose regimes can survive. They have no answers to the region's pressing problems of daunting complexity, and fail to allow for greater political participation that could produce fresh ideas and greater popular buy-in for what would otherwise be unbearable solutions. They seem incapable of any sort of reform, and are resistant to external inducements for positive change.

It is impossible to predict when the next implosion will come, or what will trigger it. Experience tells us it could be a relatively minor incident that serves as a spark, like the traffic collision that set off the first Palestinian intifada, the Tunisian street peddler's self-immolation a decade ago, or the brusque imposition of a tax on WhatsApp voice calls in Lebanon in 2019. Each could trigger a chain reaction. Autocrats' fear mongering or bribery – so effective in 2011 and since – may work again, or may not. The barrier of fear may have been broken. And a low oil price is draining the coffers of the wealthy Gulf states that have a stake in their own and most other Arab regimes' survival.

External factors will play their part as well. Official Russia convinced itself that the United States had orchestrated the Tahrir protests that ousted Hosni Mubarak, or – in a less uncharitable interpretation that is closer to the truth – that it allowed the regime to fall, and that it thus bore responsibility for the dramatic changes that swept the region. Moscow has been unequivocal in its desire to see the Arab state order undisturbed or restored, backing Sisi in Egypt, Assad in Syria, and Haftar in Libya. The Russian leadership fears the demonstration effect at home of U.S.-led regime-change efforts in eastern Europe and the MENA region. It will likely do whatever is in its power to prevent another similar threat to its vested interests.

As for America and Europe, Western governments and media viewed the popular uprisings as pointing to a deep desire on the part of many Arabs, especially the youth, for change – as expressions of hope. But when events took a turn for the worse, old fears re-emerged, and governments started tightening border controls against refugees and migrants, among whom they suspected were jihadists trying to get to Europe. In the end, European governments mostly reverted to their longstanding default approach toward the region, re-embracing the stability paradigm that had helped give rise to the uprisings in the first place, while exploring ways to encourage regimes to jettison their most repressive behavior. They are buying time, at most.

Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the embers of discontent continue to smolder. There is no turning back to the pre-2011 era, however much the likes of a Sisi or Assad may be trying. Yet no one seems prepared for the next eruption, other than by bracing oneself and hoping for the best.

***

Photo: Algerian students hold placards on April 30, 2019 as they continue their weekly demonstrations in the capital, Algiers, to demand the overthrow of the system. (Photo by Billal Bensalem/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Tags: Arab SpringArab UprisingEgyptGroupInternational CrisisTunisia
Previous Post

DAWN Condemns Retaliation against families of Egyptian Dissidents

Next Post

The Syrians: The Danger Coming from the East

Related Posts

Democracy In Exile

The Case for Reparations to the Victims of Yemen's War

In Yemen, war's costs have too often landed on civilians who bear no responsibility for the war nor for...

Kristine Beckerle
February 2, 2023
Democracy In Exile

We Are All Alaa Abdel Fattah

Alaa Abdel Fattah’s vision of a very different Egypt, along with that of millions of young Egyptians, has itself...

Juan Cole
February 1, 2023
Demonstrators are raising Syrian opposition flags and placards as they rally against a potential rapprochement between Ankara and the Syrian regime in the opposition-held city of Azaz, on the border with Turkey in Syria's northern Aleppo province, on December 30, 2022. (Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto)
Democracy In Exile

Where Would Rapprochement Between Turkey and Syria Leave the Syrian Opposition?

Turkey’s defense and intelligence ministers met with their Syrian counterparts in Moscow late last month, in the first high-level...

Emily Milliken
January 27, 2023
Democracy In Exile

The Silent Branch: How Israel's Supreme Court Crushes Palestinian Rights

Israel’s Supreme Court is a stronghold of justice for Jews only. It does not champion universal human rights, but...

Hagai El-Ad
January 26, 2023
Next Post
TOPSHOT - Displaced Syrians from Deir Ezzor head to refugee camps on the outskirts of Raqa on September 24, 2017 as Syrian fighters backed by US special forces are battling to clear the last remaining Islamic State group jihadists holed up in their crumbling stronghold. / AFP PHOTO / BULENT KILIC        (Photo credit should read BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)

The Syrians: The Danger Coming from the East

The Case for Reparations to the Victims of Yemen's War

February 2, 2023

We Are All Alaa Abdel Fattah

February 1, 2023
A picture taken during a guided tour organised by Egypt's State Information Service on February 11, 2020, shows an Egyptian policeman near watch towers at Tora prison on the southern outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Egypt: Mother of Teenager Sentenced for Peaceful 2019 Protests Commits Suicide

February 1, 2023

Categories

  • Advocacy
  • Aid Conditionality
  • Anonymous Interviews
  • Anonymous Interviews Egypt
  • Anonymous Interviews Saudi Arabia
  • Anonymous Interviews UAE
  • Cases
  • Cases Egypt
  • Cases Saudi Arabia
  • Cases UAE
  • Countries
  • Culprits
  • Culprits Egypt
  • Culprits Israel
  • Culprits Saudi Arabia
  • Culprits UAE
  • DAWN
  • Dawn's Advocacy
  • Democracy In Exile
  • Editor's Pick
  • Egypt
  • Feature
  • Fellows
  • Foreign Policy
  • Human Rights
  • Human Rights Go to War
  • International Actors
  • Israel-Palestine
  • Lobbyists
  • Lobbyists Israel Palestine
  • Palestine
  • Political prisoners
  • Press Release Egypt
  • Press Release Israel-Palestine
  • Press Release Saudi Arabia
  • Press Release UAE
  • Press Releases
  • Saudi Arabia
  • UAE
  • Uncategorized
  • United Nations
  • US – Egypt
  • US – Saudi Arabia
  • US – UAE
  • USA

SUPPORT OUR MISSION

Donate Today

About Us

Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) is a nonprofit organization that promotes democracy, the rule of law, and human rights for all of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Support Us

Donate Now

Newsletter

Facebook Twitter Instagram Linkedin Youtube

© DAWN All rights reserved. | Website Design by KRS Creative.

DONATE TODAY