Fifteen years on from the Arab Spring

Whatever happened to the Arab Spring? It began in Tunisia in 2010 and seems to be ending there fifteen years later with dozens of critics arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned and with at least 14 defendants facing the possible death penalty for being in breach of ‘state security’. The protests, insurrections and armed revolts that rippled and then convulsed across the Arab World had started in Tunisia as a response to corruption and economic stagnation. President Ben Ali was deposed, and democratic elections ensued. For many across the region and the World, Tunisia was a new beacon of hope, free speech and democracy. The popular revolt spread rapidly – to Egypt, to Bahrein, Yemen, Libya and Syria. The revolt in Libya led to the toppling of President Gadhafi, and his earlier attempt to reign in the rebellious east of the country led to a military intervention by France and Britain. These two countries defended their intervention by saying that it was covered by the UN inspired ‘Responsibility to Protect’ or R2P. But it took place without UN backing and opened the West up to charges of using humanitarian interventionism as cover for regime change. By the time the winds of change had begun to buffet the Ba’athist Allawi rulers of Syria, the whole World and its wife had decided to become involved in what turned out to be a brutal, intractable civil war.

The ‘Arab Spring’ was based upon the phenomena of the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968, Back then a temporary thaw in the iron grip of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia led to a major movement aimed at achieving ‘socialism with a human face’, i.e. a social democratic alternative to the hard-line rule of a government that owed its existence to the Soviet Union. Had the Prague Spring succeeded, there is every possibility that the Soviet Union and other eastern bloc countries might have pursued their own third way. As it was, the whole edifice collapsed in the late 1980s, with the end of both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

So, as large tracts of the Maghreb and Arab World have turned their back on the hope and expectations of the Arab Spring, have the leaderships of those countries come to the conclusion that the causes that gave rise to the Arab Spring are suitably dead and buried and with them the prospect of renewed civil revolt and resistance? Their actions – and in Tunisia especially, would suggest that they have. But this could be a major miscalculation. Food and other basic prices have continued to rise; global trade seems likely to reduce in concert with President Trump’s tariffs and the humiliation of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis is causing grave and lasting anger. The World is a much more unpredictable place that it was even at the time of the Arab Spring. Failing to deal with the causes of complaint while using increasingly repressive measures to control restive populations is a recipe for trouble. 

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly