Is the Arab Spring Dead?

August 19, 2013

Is the Arab Spring Dead?

The violent military crackdown in Egypt raises deep questions about the Middle East’s democracy movement

By Patricia Smith

In early 2011, a series of protests swept the Arab world, toppling longtime rulers in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya and sparking a violent uprising against Syria’s dictator. An enormous wave of optimism spread across the region amid predictions that democracy might finally take root in the Middle East.

It became known as the Arab Spring.

Almost three years later, the giddy enthusiasm is long gone and the region is wracked by turmoil and bloodshed. In Libya, armed militias have filled the void left by the fall of strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi. In Syria, the uprising has morphed into a civil war that’s left more than 100,000 dead and provided a haven for Islamic extremists. In Tunisia, the moderate Islamist government that took power is increasingly fragile.

But nowhere have dashed hopes been more jarring than in Egypt, long a key ally of the United States. In July, the Egyptian military ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, after enormous demonstrations against him. Then, last week, Egypt’s army and security forces killed hundreds of Morsi’s supporters in a violent crackdown.

Security forces used armored vehicles, bulldozers, tear gas, birdshot, live ammunition, and snipers to raze encampments of protesters who supported the deposed Islamist president. The confrontation lasted more than 12 hours and turned parts of Cairo into a war zone. More than 600 people were killed and close to 4,000 injured.

The scale of the attack shocked both Egyptians and the international community. The U.S. condemned the violence and is considering cutting off at least part of its annual $1.5 billion in economic and military aid.

“While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual while civilians are being killed in the streets,” President Barack Obama said.

In June 2012, Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (an Islamist organization) won a very close election to become Egypt’s first democratically elected president. Over the next year, Egypt’s problems continued to worsen—its economy sputtered, electricity outages grew, and gas became scarce. Meanwhile, Morsi enacted more measures that restricted freedoms and moved the country closer to Islamic law.

Many Egyptians became disenchanted and began to call for him to step down. In June, millions of protesters in Cairo and other cities took to the streets, demanding his removal. In response, the Egyptian military removed Morsi from power and arrested him.

That prompted the Islamists to take to the streets. They set set up camps, blocking traffic and demanding Morsi be returned to office.

The Egyptian military, backed by the interim government installed after Morsi was forced from office, say they had no choice other than clearing out the protester camps to restore order to the streets of Cairo.

The assault on the protester camps set off a vicious backlash across Egypt. Islamists attacked police stations around the country, and they lashed out at Christians, attacking or burning dozens of churches. The interim military government imposed a state of emergency, removing any limits on police action and returning Egypt to a state of martial law, as it was under the 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime that ended with the Arab Spring.

With a population of 82 million, Egypt is the largest country in the Arab world and it’s often considered a trendsetter in the region. If democracy can’t take hold there, some experts worry that the entire region is in danger of slipping backward into despotism.

“The military government that is fast taking shape in Egypt will strengthen the hands of the hardliners across the region,” says Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

The Arab Spring began in December 2010, when a 26-year-old fruit vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest his mistreatment by the police. News of the incident quickly spread and spurred huge protests across a region where iron-fisted rulers had long maintained a tight grip on freedom of speech.

Ordinary citizens throughout the Middle East suddenly stood up to demand change: Tunisia’s longtime dictator was toppled after a month of demonstrations. Next to fall was Egypt’s autocratic president, Mubarak. An armed uprising against Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi succeeded, with military help from the U.S. and other Western countries. Protesters took to the streets in Syria, hoping to remove President Bashar al-Assad, who had inherited his post from his dictator father.

But Arab countries that had suffered political and economic stagnation under decades of autocratic rule were poorly equipped to build new governments and civil society, Middle East analysts say. While some of the movements achieved their immediate goals of removing dictators, their wider aims—democracy, human rights, rule of law, and economic growth—now appear more distant than ever.

“All the people in those countries lived under similar suppression despite the differences in their regimes, so the uprisings were contagious,” says Sarkis Naoum, a political analyst at Lebanon’s An Nahar newspaper. “But nobody in Syria, Libya, Egypt, or Tunisia who wanted to get rid of the regime was prepared for what came next.”

Throughout the region, the demands for change—for jobs, food, health care, and basic security to live in peace—have not been addressed by the political upheavals so far. If anything, their grievances have grown. And in many ways, the Arab Spring has worsened deep societal splits, both between secularists (those who want to keep religion and government separate) and Islamists and between different religions and sects, such as Muslims and Christians in Egypt and Sunnis and Shiites in Syria.

The current turmoil has left many Arab activists disillusioned. This is increasingly the case in Syria, where an originally peaceful pro-democratic uprising has evolved into a sectarian civil war, with extremist fighters, some tied to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, which carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks, playing an increasing role on the battlefield.

“In the beginning it was a real revolution—I was excited to work, I bought a weapon from my own pocket and sold land to buy ammunition,” says Soheil Ali, who led a small rebel group in northern Syria until he quit recently in frustration. “Now it is completely different.”

Historians point out that major political shifts usually take decades or generations. The European revolutions of 1848, a series of popular upheavals, affected more than 50 countries, but quickly collapsed under the repression of military forces loyal to kings and aristocrats. Over time, though, they sowed the seeds of progressive political ideas that laid the groundwork for European democracy in the 20th century.

Despite the current turmoil in the Middle East, Zaid al-Ali, a constitutional expert based in Cairo, is encouraged by some subtle but profound social changes in the region. For instance, it’s now become normal for citizens of Arab Spring countries to insult their rulers—something that was unthinkable only a few years ago.

“This dynamic of free expression, of political liberalization where now you have lots of political parties and people expressing themselves freely,” al-Ali says, “this will lead us in a positive direction in the long run.”

With reporting by Mark Landler, Ben Hubbard, Rick Gladstone, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Alan Cowell of The New York Times.