Some 13 years after the revolution set streets and squares alight across the region, we at Daraj raise the question: has  the Arab Spring been defeated? We examine the new variables: from the Arab normalization with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the dictatorships of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qais Saeed. It is these events that prompted us to ask: what remains of the Arab Spring? 

We ask this in the context of the collapse of the main Arab capitals Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo, and the persecution faced by activists, artists and journalists in an Arab world where power seemingly does not wane and where prison is the fate of anyone who dares raise a question.

What are We Still Doing Here? 

I cannot count the number of times I was asked this question, or something similar. It is brought up without necessarily expecting an answer, as we have hardly any options. Surviving, living in a state of collapse, under dictatorships, has become an inevitable destiny, even when we try to beautify reality within our own spaces with ambitious discussions about social and political justice and economic models, as we find ourselves facing a dead end.

Beirut has been hit by economic collapse. Its port has been blown up. Damascus was reclaimed by Assad’s darkness. Cairo remains in a military grip, Khartoum is fighting, Baghdad is faltering, while Tunisia is rapidly heading towards the situation prior to the revolution.

The harsh reality has led to disappointment among the masses, and a lack of desire to do anything. Even human rights violations and corruption scandals no longer move the people. Protest is no longer an option, as we live in indifferent societies, with a tremendous ability to endure oppression and injustice, ruled by disappointment and despair. 

Should We Declare Defeat?

As deadlock and darkness are expanding in the region, a disturbing phase in the most existential sense, the question arises if the costs of the crushed revolutions have been too great to bear by the generations that mobilized, chanted and dreamed, and were displaced, imprisoned and killed.

There were common concerns among the first wave of protesters in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Libya and Yemen, and later among those of the second wave in Iraq, Sudan and Lebanon. Revolutions that started peacefully, put forward transformative ideas and saw women in an advanced position, before the ruling forces turned upon them.

The defeat of the demand for change and freedom in the face of tyranny, and the brutality of the regimes and militias in power, brings us back to the major questions almost ten years after the first protests: How do we get out of the decadence that has accumulated  in our societies to become sectarian, cultural and economic political structures that have taken over the Arab space.

There is no doubt that the nail in the coffin of the Arab revolutions, led by so many young men and women in 2011, has reached a transitional end, at least temporarily. The end scene was evident in the May 19 Arab League Summit in Jeddah, where the festive reception of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad served as a curtain call.

Assad’s return to the Arab League means the victory of tyranny. An event supporters have tried to rationalize as “pragmatic,” but which really just sums up the solidarity between the region’s dictators and their collective power to block any reform or development.

And all of this happens with tacit Western consent. True, Western capitals, including Washington, still refuse normalization with the Assad regime, but extending the red carpet to Assad in Jeddah is a direct reflection of the shortcomings of American and Western foreign policy in the region. 

Showing selective support for “democratic principles” is like standing for nothing at all. The failure to deter Assad and his allies from committing crimes is the result of American and Western indecisiveness, narrow-mindedness, and drawing noncoercive red lines.

And thus the world witnessed a war criminal posing for photos at a regional summit after half his people were displaced. His presence was the nail in the coffin of an often overlooked global obligation to protect populations.

Since the protests started in 2011, more than 30,000 children have been killed in attacks by Syrian regime forces across the country. In addition, over 47 percent of the 5.5 million refugees residing in neighboring countries are under the age of 25. Over a third of them do not have access to education. 

Their hopes for a more secure and democratic future, the same hopes that initially sparked the 2011 revolution, no longer have a future in Assad-ruled Syria.

True, the Syrian disappointment is not the only one in the region, but it is undisputedly the cruelest. 

Crown Prince MBS

The memory of the Arab revolutions is still fresh in the minds of the region’s leaders, who fear another wave of uprisings, mainly due to mounting economic frustrations. The Jeddah summit, where Assad gace acte de presence for the first time in 12 years, shed a light on the Saudi political repositioning project. 

Behind the endeavor stands the smart, reckless, and ruthless personality of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has embarked on a major diplomatic effort aimed at repositioning Saudi Arabia and the Middle East on the map of the world.

The 37-year-old MBS, as he has become known, has succeeded in changing the status quo through a mix socio-economic reform, political repression, and a  series of executions. 

Regionally, he relied on the principle of confusing opportunism with pragmatism in renewing Saudi relations with Turkey and Qatar, which led to the advancement of Saudi Arabia over the United Arab Emirates (UAE), after the latter preceded MBS in the normalizing ties with Assad. The UAE also preceded him in signing the Abraham Accords with Israel.

Perhaps it is more appropriate to consider that Assad’s return to the Arab League, and the subsequent “warm” mutual meetings, is just the Syrian dictator’s return to his normal position alongside his authoritarian counterparts.

The time has passed for leaders, who do not value the freedom of their own people, to claim to stand by the freedom of the Syrian or any other people. Perhaps the good news is that this deception has finally come to an end.

Reconciliation

True, the [Qatari] Al-Jazeera channel has stopped pursuing the murderers of Jamal Khashoggi and the jailers of Saudi women activists. Likewise, the [Saudi]  Al-Arabiya channel is no longer interested in uncovering Qatar’s funding of extremist Islamic groups. 

The current Saudi-Iranian reconciliation, another chapter of the game unfolds, while Assad’s return has arguably shattered the last illusions many people had tried to believe.

What To Do?

The despots have returned to their posts, and the empty rhetoric suggesting that the oil-fuelled autocratic regimes supported the revolutions has ended! And we are left with a dispute between a tyrant who normalized ties with Israel, and another who is resisting? The madness of the Arab-Iranian conflict has subsided, and everyone has returned to the shackles of misery and oppression.

The reconciliation among tyrants was made possible after the danger of change had passed, and despair, poverty and humiliation prevailed. This is what hurts the most. 

The fact that the reasons for the revolutions have only multiplied and aggravated, with imprisonment and exile threaten huge groups of people, who pay the price for the defeat of freedom.

The revolutions target military and corrupt regimes bearing sectarian and tribal features. The groups that carried the slogan of change, and defended it, are at a rift, living at a loss, and it is not yet clear how they will be able to rise again. Perhaps what is required, while rejecting this new reality, is to rethink and mobilize differently.

No one has a ready-made solution, but one thing is certain: we do not have the luxury of submissiveness and despair, while the ruling cliques continue to control our destinies. This means we need to persevere in developing our role as individuals and groups trying to be free from family, sectarian, and ethnic restrictions, and believe in fair, democratic values. 

The current collapse, and the many stumbling blocks we continue to encounter, do not signal the end – no matter how much frustration and surrender seek to dominate. 

We have paid a heavy price for the illusion to think change can happen through a moment of protest in a short period of time. Those who carry the illusion that revolution will overturn everything overlook the destruction leveled by the region’s authoritarian regimes, which is so deep and fundamental that repair requires a long-term process.

Popular protest, or revolution, is one step among the many needed to heal the political, social and cultural rift caused by military, totalitarian and autocratic leaderships. As the past decade taught us, it is not sufficient. 

Still, we simply do not have the luxury of despair and complacency, because we are doomed to even more crises if we do. 

If there is something we learnt from the pitfalls of the Arab revolutions, it is that change requires a long journey, an accumulation of experiences and learning from failure, and disappointment, rather than surrendering to the latter.