Artiklar • december 5, 2011
The Arab Spring – Bahrain and Syria – One Year on
By Mohamad Zakaria
Part 3 of 3.
Bahrain
In Bahrain, the uprising has been largely silenced with the help of the national Bahraini troops and later on also with some help of the troops that were sent by the neighbouring Gulf Arab States to support the Bahraini national army. However, the consequences have led to much political tension between the opposition and the Bahraini regime, which has affected the economy of this important banking center in the Gulf region. The tension between Iran and the Gulf Arab States is part of the problem affecting Bahrain’s political stability. This is because the Bahraini Government suspects the regime in Iran of supporting the main opposition parties which are responsible for organizing the demonstrations against the current Bahraini regime.
There King of Bahrain is trying to make reconciliation with the opposition by promising to support political and economic reforms. He has also appointed a committee of international experts that has investigated the human rights abuses against the demonstrators during the uprising. Those international human rights expert’s report reported many human rights abuses against the demonstrators including torture. The king has accepted the report’s findings and seems to take measures against the officials who committed those abuses and encouraged some positive political change. It has yet to be seen if that change will be enough and if it will be successfully implemented and whether the opposition will agree and cooperate in the stabilisation efforts.
Syria
In Syria, the revolution has been ongoing since March 2011. Over 4000 people have been killed so far, thousands got injured and tens of thousands are detained without fair trial by the regime, on suspicion of participating in the demonstrations. The demonstrations initially were demanding the regime for the much needed political and economic reforms. However, the largely peaceful demonstrators have been met with military power from the regime and militias. Consequently, the demonstrators’ goal now is to topple the Assad regime. Soldiers of the Syrian national army have also deflected and organized themselves under the name ”Free Syrian Army”, an organization that claims to have been helping to protect the demonstrators from the regime’s armed militias. The Syrian National Council, whose members are from the various opposition parties of Syria, is the main political organization which is coordinating and leading the political efforts internationally to facilitate and support the demonstrators in their efforts to topple the current regime in Syria.
The Syrian revolution had initially divided the people in the Arab world between supporters and opponents of the uprising. The Bashar Al-Assad’s regime has supported and hosted the opposition Palestinian parties and also the Hezbollah of Lebanon, the distinguished enemies of Israel and the much supported ones from the people in the Arab world, in its efforts throughout the years to gain legitimacy and political influence as well as popular support in the region. It has supported them in their fight against Israel using this tactic as one of its main strategies to stay in power in addition to having made strategic allies with the current regimes in Iran, Russia, and China. But Syria’s regime’s militias and the national army’s use of excessive force and the brutality it is using against the demonstrations have changed the Arab people’s public opinion and also those of the official Arab governments’ stands against the Assad regime.
Recently, the Arab League decided to implement economic, diplomatic, and political sanctions against the regime in Syria. The European Union, the USA, and Turkey have also imposed such sanctions. Russia and China are continuing to support the Assad regime. However, this may change if those two countries, in addition to Iran, will eventually realize that supporting the Assad regime will be against their strategic long-term interests in the region and when it will be obvious that the regime is definitely soon to collapse. An international military intervention is highly unlikely and not wanted or advisable because of the much negative consequences of such intervention on the region’s stability. The change in Syria may only be from within and also with the support of the other Arab countries.
Final comments
In other Arab countries, most of the rulers have been taking precautionary measures. They are promising to introduce reforms, increase salaries, create jobs for their citizens, and promising more political openness to protect themselves from similar revolutions. However, most of the reforms are rather slow in pace. Nevertheless, such reform would have never been possible if not the revolutions in the other Arab countries. Moreover, the effects of the ”Arab Spring” are also felt beyond the Middle East. Many authoritarian regimes around the world have started promising or effectively started doing some reforms. However, some others have started tightening their controls on the opposition even further by intensifying their efforts in prohibiting their publically controlled channels to show the demonstrations in the Arab world. They also try to put emphasis on the revolutions’ negative consequences and/or mistakes and to try magnify that in order to make their citizens abstain from participating in any future uprisings against their regimes. This is because those regimes are afraid that their nations will get inspired from the Arab revolutions and will follow the path of the Arab revolutionaries in trying to get rid of their own authoritarian regimes.
The uprisings have been a necessity to demand reforms in the region to modernize the economic and political systems. The decades of people’s patience in the region with the hope that the regimes will voluntarily make the necessary change to improve their citizens’ quality of life have faded and the people there had to attempt to force their regimes to do so or to force them to go.
The one-party government ruling during this period is not recommended in any of the countries that have gone through revolutions even if such party has won the number of seats in the parliament during the elections. Therefore, the winning parties should not form national governments of their own but shall make real coalition governments with the other political parties in the country that received major popular support in the elections. This is a very sensitive period to govern given the complexity of the political and economic situation of the countries after the revolutions and also considering the ongoing global economic crisis. People in the region are having extremely high hopes from the newly formed governments and want to see immediate economic and political change. However, this is going to be an extremely difficult task to succeed in making during short period of time.
The fact that the old regimes’ people and corrupt mentality are still dominating many key positions within the current political systems may be among the destabilizing factors of the newly formed governments. Moreover, many international and regional powers, who may be unhappy with the parliamentary election results, may also try to destabilise the newly formed regimes politically and economically, as well as by creating insecurity situation. Therefore, national unity coalition governments that represent the different political, ideological views in the countries of the region that reflect the peoples’ choice, which ultimately need share the enormous responsibility and challenges, should be formed after fair and free parliamentary elections. The coalition governments may minimise the risks of failure and also lead their respective countries, which have recently gone through revolutions, to have better chances to succeed in building up modern systems based on the rule of law and democracy that fit the culture of people in those countries. It may take many years to successfully change negative behaviors and wrong policies such as corruption, mismanagement, hiring on the basis of personal connection rather than skills and qualifications, among many other bad practices that were practised by many of the former governments key civil servants. Such big responsibility needs united coalition governments with sincere intentions to put and apply strategies for middle-and-long-term positive change and not only for immediate superficial changes but for the real success political and economic success in the region. Modern education system reforms are the key for such success.
Photo: Creative Commons license, Al Jazeera English (Title: Critical condition – ”Another man in critical condition at the Intensive Care Unit of Salmaniya Hospital was Qassim Saeed Jaber Hilal, shot in the chest on February 18. Doctors said that his condition was stabilizing. Two other anti-government demonstrators from February 17 protests remained in the ICU as well.”)
(The opinions presented in this article represent those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of UF in any way, nor are they intended to represent the views of any organisation or company which the author represents. UF is a politically and religiously independent organisation.)
