Frustration has surfaced once again in Tunisia seven years after Ben Ali stepped down as President of that country on January 14, 2011. Social justice and dignity were the key demands of the Tunisian revolution. This eventually evolved into the Arab Spring dynamics. People in that country and elsewhere in the Middle East felt that it was their time to change things. There has been transformation but the scenario has definitely become more complex. This has led to instability rather than prosperity.
Regional political scientists and analysts have been wracking their brains for quite a few years as to why they could not foresee the advent of Arab Spring. They failed to predict the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. They have also tried to understand why the two revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia were reasonably nonviolent despite the presence of brutal Administrations and why the revolution in Libya was so violent.
Some have suggested that the long presence of authoritarian governments in the Middle East had caused them to overemphasise the powers of the ruling cliques, and, by default, understate the force of ordinary people in initiating major political change in these countries. A few analysts, from South and South East Asia, have also drawn comparison in the manner in which dictatorial regimes were toppled within short times in Bangladesh and the Philippines. The consensus that has emerged is that loyalty within authoritarian regimes can never be assumed to be long-lasting and that even the seemingly most obedient actors such as the bureaucracy, police and military might shift their loyalties away from their political superiors.
The emergence of the unexpected Arab Spring was a fundamental lack of understanding of what civil resistance is and how it can defeat authoritarian rulers. Any description of civil resistance also needs to be understood as being similar to nonviolent resistance, nonviolent conflict, or nonviolent struggle carried out through the use of different nonviolent tactics such as strikes, boycotts, mass protest and civil disobedience. We have seen this happening in Bangladesh in 1990 and 1996. The strategy that links these tactics is designed to mobilise oppositional participation, disrupt the status quo and elicit defections from the regime side, thus changing the power dynamics between the existing Administration and the citizens.
An important element in the exercise of civil resistance strategy is the maintaining of discipline within the nonviolent structure. The civil resistance paradigm is distinct from the exercise of nonviolence solely as a moral commitment. It would also be wrong to describe it as pacifism.
If civil resistance becomes violent then it consolidates the ranks of the regime loyalists and also provides an excuse for the entrenched undemocratic regimes and their law-enforcement authorities to take measures based on force. This is exactly what happened in Syria. Once the opponents of President Assad began using violence minority groups felt increasingly insecure. Initially, some of them, driven by the anti-government grievances, had joined in the anti-Assad protests. Later, when opposition violence escalated, they flocked to the Syrian regime and have since then remained loyal to it.
Over the last three years, there has been a lot of soul-searching among analysts. Questions have been raised by social historians as to whether nonviolent revolutions fail to bring about sustained positive change. There have also been analysts who have pointed out that in most cases, within a nonviolent scenario, after the victories of the activists there was normally a power vacuum that was quickly filled in by people with arms. This view has received support from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his acolytes, who have painted the Arab Spring as events that have only resulted in chaos, violence, instability and extremism. Some critics of the current Russian Administration have, however, differed and tangentially pointed out that the criticism from Putin was due to political motive where "any challenge to the autocrats in other countries is indirectly a challenge to their own authoritarian rule at home".
Commentators have at different times expressed increasing apprehension that popular nonviolent movement-based changes might lead to violence, civil wars, violent extremism, and gradually the reemergence of authoritarianism. They use as examples the unfolding and evolving dramatic violence in Libya and Tunisia and also the terrible acts of violent Islamists who joined the Islamic State (ISIS) in increasing numbers or waged their own armed struggles.
Analysts also refer to the other side of the coin and use some other Middle Eastern countries as examples. They have observed that in Egypt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has not only restored authoritarian rule two years after the fall of Mubarak, but his regime has also limited the activities of the civil society as had been done by his predecessors. In Syria, hopes of political change have quickly degenerated into all-out civil war. Yemen likewise has sunk into the mire of violent conflict. All these developments have increased volatility in the region.
Nevertheless, sociologists feel that chances of democratic outcomes from nonviolent movements are vastly higher than for other forms of transitions. Secondly, they point out that with regard to the Arab Spring in particular, dynamics and impacts of revolutions differed from country to country. They point out that effects of civil resistance were often tangible. This was evident through the process of military defections that saw soldiers refuse to follow orders to shoot unarmed protesters. However, instead of joining and bolstering nonviolent resistance, military defectors in some countries sometimes gave leadership to armed resistance. This had devastating consequences. The sociologists mention that such an end-result was hardly the fault of the initial nonviolent organisers. In other words, according to these analysts, a turn to violence meant the struggle no longer remained civil resistance. Nonviolent uprisings were in essence hijacked by violent groups and that was not the fault of the original activists.
Social historians have also tried to defend the apparent inability of Arab Spring activists in carrying out their objectives. They think that the biggest barrier to their efforts was the legacy of decades of authoritarian rule that stifled independent voices and institutions, developed a pervasive political culture of corruption, repression, civic passivity, and fear, and resulted in economic and social depravation. Short-lived nonviolent revolutions could consequently be hardly to blame for not succeeding in overcoming such a deeply rooted legacy.
During 2017, there have been discussions and analyses not only in the media but also in the academic circle as to whether the impetus ushered in through the Arab Spring initiative has really been helpful for some of the affected countries. Special emphasis is given to the evolving situation in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain.
One recalls that the short-lived, week-long unarmed uprising in Libya was quickly overtaken by a violent revolt and subsequent armed intervention. These, along with the legacy of Gadhafi's own rule, were the main contributing factors of the ensuing chaos, which, in turn, created an opening for the extremists. Subsequent military interventions contributed significantly to violence, increased fatalities and political transitions that ended in the country relapsing into lack of good governance and civil war. Libya, similarly to Syria, has now become an example of a country where a nonviolent revolution did not have the chance to continue and run its course. Armed opposition groups and external interventions have helped to drive the last nails into the coffin.
Similarly, in Yemen, popular mobilisation against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who resigned at the end of 2011, was mixed with violence and external interference. The power-transfer agreement overseen by the Gulf Cooperation Council was not viewed as genuine and was quickly rejected by the grassroots opposition, including Houthi rebels. Internal violence also evolved due to spiked interests of both Iran and Saudi Arabia providing military support to the opposing sides. This eventually led to a full-blown Saudi military intervention in 2015. International Affairs analysts consequently observe that what doomed the uprising in Yemen was not a nonviolent revolution, but rather a revolution that was never fully nonviolent, with its resolution (transfer-of-power) never authentic or legitimate in the eyes of the population. The complexity was further compounded with other countries continuing to provide military support to warring parties.
Tunisia has probably been the brightest spot in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. There have been many challenges since the nonviolent revolution but most of them appear to have been overcome. This country has had a democratic transition. One can only hope that their effort will be sustainable. Their culture of nonviolent contestation has created a belief in the need for cooperation and compromise. These elements are positively influencing its post-revolutionary political landscape and have reduced the possible re-emergence of outright mass violence or authoritarian rule.
These developments after Arab Spring are now being carefully studied and monitored by practitioners of civil resistance. Consequently, their concerns about democracy, human rights, sustainable peace and stability are also being reviewed so that new strategies and actions take all factors into consideration to produce long-term democratic outcomes.
The writer, a former Ambassador, is an analyst specialised in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance. [email protected]
