We return spring “to the Arab Spring”

Another year, another decade and another round of bad news in the Middle East. The first headlines last week could not “sterron” more. Death in Egyptian prisons, fighting in Sudan, worsening humanitarian crises in Yemen and Syria, illegal expansion of Israeli colonies in Palestine, political paralysis in Tunisia, failure of Libyan ceasefire talks, and finally, as if to lay the lid, the American-Iranian conflict in Iraq and the collapse of Ukrainian civilian aircraft with 176 people on board.

And the list goes on...

The situation has been so serious for so long that it is clouding the even thin line between realism and fatalism in the region. Oppression, violence, sectarianism, inequality, uncertainty, and war are so widespread, so persistent that any optimism is sure to lead to pessimism.

Indeed, since the beginning of the Arab Spring nine years ago, seasons have changed dramatically, dimming even the few precious optimism that brought weight to popular uprisings in their early days. Many Arabs today have come to believe that the good news is always infested with bad news, and that success carries seeds of failure in themselves. In this way, even those revolutions that succeeded in “represented” dictatorships were left with the burden of the past that haunts their future.

This could explain skepticism to the new wave of popular unrest that spread over the past year from Sudan and Algeria to Iraq and Lebanon, and beyond, Iran. Such skepticism, however, should not obscure the sensitivity, discretion, and greatness of the new uprisings.

Protest waves in these countries are moving in the footsteps of popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, embracing peace, authenticity and reform, and rejecting violence and civil conflict as a means to confront oppressive and corrupt regimes.

They seem to have taken the difficult lessons from Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq, because they do not accept wars with third parties and foreign military interventions, which bring, reportedly security and democracy, but produce chaos and destruction. The new uprisings insist on democratic reforms without sectarianism, fundamentalism and authoritarianism, refusing the meaningless shift from one form of authoritarianism to another.

These lessons may not guarantee success, but they are necessary to achieve some political progress. They are already putting Arab regimes in defence, forcing leaders to resign, putting pressure on parliaments for reform and setting new precedents for peaceful changes.

Such processes, though slow and difficult, are essential for reforms to be truly democratic. Unlike those totalitarians, democratic revolutions are of an evolutionary nature and take much more time to change society's transformed political culture. But this is the only way to prepare for the depleting business of democratic government.

So for all disappointed with the Arab Spring, with the failures and losses of countless, for all those who never accepted it as a <x0mport <x0mport” of the Prague Spring of 1968 or Spring of the 1848 Nations, I say: try to view this spring not as an equivalent of the Czech or European movement, not as an event with a beginning and an end, but rather as hope of defeating despair, as the courage to overcome fear and as a change that comes with a better promise of future. And so as we enter this new decade, let's bring back spring, Arab Spring. / TCh/