Sudanese protesters a few days ago in Khartoum. Ashraf Shazly / AFP
Conflict between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces has divided the Arab world in recent years. The hostility is not as significant as the struggle for regional hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has heightened Sunni-Shiite tensions. But it has partly determined the recent history of the region and is continuing to do so.
The “Arab Spring” is not dead. It was buried alive by forces that were unwilling to accept change. The recent toppling of Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, in peaceful, mass protests only confirms that the revolution is still ongoing in the Arab world.
“The Sudanese and Algerian revolts are part of both the political stalemate in these countries and the ‘long term process’ of democratization in the Arab world. If there is an acceleration today it is because the two logics have collided,” said Mohammad Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, professor of international history at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
At the same time, the counter-revolutionary camp has continued to be active. A constitutional amendment in Egypt, allowing President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to extend his term, was approved by 88 percent in a referendum last Tuesday. The vote is yet another sign of the counter-revolutionaries’ determination to hang on to power for as long as possible and to ignore the popular aspirations that have challenged the established order in recent years. The Arab Spring called into question the idea that authoritarianism was the best model of government for people–incorrectly viewed as violent and fanatical by nature–in the region, that geopolitics explained everything and that the societal and political stupor in Arab societies could last forever.
The events of 2010-2011 highlighted the dysfunction of the Arab authoritarian model when dealing with younger and more educated populations. But this image was quickly tarnished, and the “Arab Spring” gained a negative reputation. The uprisings became associated with instability, war and the rise of Islamists and jihadists and were accused of being responsible for all of the ills that have since taken place since. Decades of authoritarian rule were all too quickly forgotten, as if societies where politics had been excluded from the public sphere could become Scandinavian democracies overnight.
"In ten years or fifteen years, they will be gone"
The Arab revolutions faced two obstacles in recent years: countries that tried to benefit from them and countries that tried to smother them. The first camp was led by Qatar and Turkey and the second by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Qatar and Turkey supported the Muslim brotherhood in an attempt to increase their influence in the region. Saudi and the UAE came to the aid of traditional, conservative institutions, especially security services, to lead the counterrevolution. That division led to a geopolitical power struggle between Sunni states that derailed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The conflict in Syria is a different case. There, Iran is the main counter-revolutionary force from the region while Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey supported the revolution with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
In recent years, the counter-revolutionaries have won everywhere. Authoritarian leaders have returned to power, pushing modernization without political rights. They have increased their repression and hunted their opponents. The Algerian and Sudanese revolutions could be a source of worry for these authoritarian leaders who survived the Arab Spring or emerged in its aftermath. The most recent revolutions show that authoritarianism cannot withstand the march of history indefinitely.
“The neo-authoritarian push-back can only defer this inevitable rendezvous that is the issue of a representative Arab state. Rebuilding a state-society relationship is an arduous process that began in the 1980s and has already taken over two generations. The fact that Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has reinstated the ‘Mubarak system’ in Egypt will not prevent the possibility of a Tahrir 2.0 just as Mohammad Bin Salman’s despotism must not blind us to the energy of an ever-demanding Saudi social-political scene,” Mohamedou, the professor, said.
In an interview with the L’Orient-Le Jour last month, Egyptian author Alaa al-Aswany, whose books are banned in his country, expressed a similar viewpoint: “The revolutionaries only have two things: dreams and courage. The old regime has everything: the military, the police, the media, the businessmen. So at first, the old regime will win. But at some point it won’t be able to continue for a very simple reason: the age of the revolutionaries. They are between 20 and 30 years old, and the age of the opposing camp is around 60-70 years. In ten or fifteen years, they will be gone.”
(This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour on the 26th of April)
