Arab Spring: Death to humanity

[Solomon2]

Arab Spring: Death to humanity


ABDULATEEF AL-MULHIM
Published — Wednesday 28 August 2013
Last Update 28 August 2013 2:30 am

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Since the start of the Arab Spring, we have seen men, women and children get killed by stray bullets, tank shells, scud missiles, attack helicopters and fighter jets.

There are innocent people in Syria under attack by chemical weapons, regardless of which side is guilty of using them, and nothing has been done by world communities. So, what are we waiting for? Are we waiting to see nuclear bombs used to kill innocents indiscriminately?

The Arab Spring erupted in many Arab countries, from Tunisia to Libya and from Egypt to Syria.

Yet I have always maintained that the Arab Spring was dead on arrival although I have the highest respect for people’s demands for better living standards, social equality, freedom to think and ask questions and to eradicate corruption.

I also have no fond sentiment for Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and his sons, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and Syria’s Bashar Assad, but I wasn’t optimistic about the outcome of their departure.

The Arab and Western media welcomed the changes, but apparently, many analysts don’t know the complexity of the Arab world.

When you talk to a Syrian from Damascus and a Syrian from Aleppo, it is like talking to two people from two different planets.

A Libyan from Benghazi is completely different to a Libyan from Tripoli. An Egyptian from Cairo would not be welcome in Egypt’s Sinai.

A Yemeni from Sanaa considers a Yemini from Aden his sworn enemy. The simple fact is that these countries are already divided beyond imagination.

Ironically, it was those ousted dictators who held these countries together. Yes, dictatorship is inexcusable, but this is the reality of the Arab world. Just look at Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Who would have imagined that many Iraqis now miss the good old days of Saddam? How can people miss someone who was behind the death of at least one member of every single Iraqi family, including his own?

The answer is easy. Arabs are not ready to be ruled by a democratic system and dictatorship is the norm. Somehow, the Arab world always enjoys having a leader with charisma regardless of what he does or doesn’t do for them.

Former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s legacy is still lamented in Egypt although it was him who made the Arab world as divided as we see it today and lost every war he dragged Egypt into.

Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and many still regard him as a hero. In other words, if democracy is good for one place, then so is dictatorship. This is why I thought the quest for democracy during the Arab Spring was dead on arrival. But, it isn’t only the Arab Spring that has died. Respect for humanity is dead too.

We now see chemical weapons being used against innocent men, women and children. What atrocity can be more ghastly than this?

The sad story in the Middle East is that we distort reality. Over the past few decades, the world saw extensive use of chemical weapons on two occasions and not during a state of war between two enemies, but by governments against their own people. Iraq used it against the Kurds and Syria used it against Syrians.

And it is ironic that the area saw many wars, but no chemical weapons were used except against civilians by their own government, with the exception of Iraq using such weapons against the Iranians during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

So now, the question is: What would make a dictator stage an all-out war against his own people? The answer is simple. Because he knows that he can get away with it.

Everyone in the area is waiting for the United States Navy and other Western countries to carry out their routine checks and surveillance and wait for the green light from the White House.

Whatever the outcome of the intervention, we will hear many voices. If the attack takes place and its results go as planned, many people will say the United States did it for its own interest.

If the attacks don’t go as planned, then we will blame Washington and never ourselves.

Isn’t it ironic that we’re so anti-American and yet the first thing we ask for during conflict is American intervention?

The bigger question is: What would happen to Syria and the Syrian people if Bashar Assad is gone or killed?

Who will run the country and who will prevent any future atrocities when the time for revenge and counter-revenge comes?

There will be more killings and the dust will not settle for a long time. So, the question that people in the Arab world have to answer is: What really led to the Arab Spring and how can civilian death be avoided during times of unrest?

The Arab world will continue to suffer very unstable conditions unless they eradicate corruption and promote social equality. We should educate our children to respect the others and not teach them to hate others. Killing in the countries of the Arab Spring, including Iraq, is becoming daily news.

The sad fact is that the killings are carried out in the most gruesome of manners in the name of religion and the killing is based on sect and ethnicity.

Your identity could be a blessing in one place but could be the reason for a lengthy interrogation and brutal execution the next.

The bottom line is that this Arab Spring has exposed how divided the Arabs really are. The Arabs’ No. 1 enemy is not foreigners but themselves. Indeed, many Arab countries have been sleeping with the enemy for a long time. The Arab Spring has taught us that a there is no respect for the human soul.

Finally, the billion-dollar question. Many in the Arab world want to see the US attack the Syrian government’s strongholds, but what if the American military has to use Israeli military data links, intelligence data, air space, radar coverage and search-and-rescue cooperation to do so?

• This article is exclusive to Arab News.

Email: almulhimnavy@hot mail.com

 

[Solomon2]

'I started the Arab Spring. Now death is everywhere, and extremism blooming'
Faida Hamdy confiscated a vegetable stall in Tunisia five years ago today. Neither she nor the rest of the world could have imagined the consequences

Tunisian municipal officer Faida Hamdy Photo: AFP

By Radhouane Addala in Sidi Bouzeid and Richard Spencer, Middle East Editor
6:00AM GMT 17 Dec 2015

It is hardly surprising that when Faida Hamdy wonders whether she is responsible for everything that happened after her moment of fame she is overwhelmed.

Mrs Hamdy was the council inspector who, five years ago today confiscated the vegetable stall of a street vendor in her dusty town in central Tunisia.

In despair, that young man set himself on fire in a protest outside the council offices. Within weeks, he was dead, dozens of young Arab men had copied him, riots had overthrown his president, and the Arab Spring was under way.

As the world marks the anniversary, Syria and Iraq are in flames, Libya has broken down, and the twin evils of militant terror and repression stalk the region.

Demonstrators face Egyptian police forces in the streets leading to Tahrir Square Photo: Julian Simmonds?The Telegraph

“Sometimes I wish I’d never done it,” Mrs Hamdy told The Telegraph, in her only interview to mark the occasion.

Hers is a voice that has been rarely heard: the family of the young man, Mohammed Bouazizi, became unwilling celebrities in the weeks after his lingering death, but a nervous regime arrested Mrs Hamdy when the protests began.

By the time she was acquitted of all charges and released, President Zine el-Abedine Ben Ali had fallen, and media attention was focused on Egypt, Libya and Syria.

“I feel responsible for everything,” she went on. Her voice was shaky as she spoke of the traumatic consequences, five years that have transformed the Middle East but seemingly changed very little in poor, provincial towns like Sidi Bouzeid.

“Sometimes, I blame myself and say it is all because of me. I made history since I was the one who was there and my action contributed to it but look at us now. Meanwhile, Tunisians are suffering as always.”

Mohammed Bouazizi’s death triggered some deep nerve in the Arab world. Many myths were told about his own story and that of Mrs Hamdy, as there were about the nature of subsequent uprisings and downfalls, but there remains a basic truth underlying his experience and that of many others.

Demonstrators turn over a burned out car after reclaiming the side streets near Tahrir Square Photo: Julian Simmonds/The Telegraph

Corruption, stifling bureaucracy, and repressive police states were holding back a largely youthful population across the region, and their victims had little way to make their frustrations felt other than extreme actions.

Subsequent studies found that self-immolation had already become a common act in Tunisia, accounting already for 15 per cent of all burns cases in Tunis hospitals. Within six months, more than 100 Tunisians had followed suit, and scores more around the Arab world, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, had also set themselves on fire.

Still, not many observers could have imagined the chaos that would ensue, even when Mr Ben Ali gave way to weeks of protest and boarded a plane for Saudi Arabia with his wife and a large chunk of the country’s gold reserves.

Next Hosni Mubarak of Egypt went, after 18 days of telegenic demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Then Col Muammar Gaddafi was forced out, after protests turned into civil war and then international war, with the West’s air forces joining in.

By the time he was bayoneted and shot in October 2011, Syria was in flames, and the West was starting to vacillate about its role, with effects that can still be seen today. Libya, Syria and much of Iraq remain failed states. Egypt is on the brink.

In the process a social uprising had turned into a conflict between Islamism, part peaceful, part violent, and secular governments and politicians; and then between religious sects, as Sunni and Shia turned on each other.

Despite Mrs Hamdy’s despair at the poverty that remains in Tunisia, the country is still seen as the sole success. It has had two general elections in the years since, with a moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, winning the first, before stepping into opposition in the face of an alliance between secular parties that included members of the former regime last year.

Much of that is down to a deal negotiated by Rached Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s head, who agreed to give up power despite the party’s electoral strength.

He told The Telegraph this week that he and his colleagues had decided to compromise after considering fundamental issues of what democracy meant.

“Majoritarian rule, 50 per cent of the vote, is not sufficient,” he said. He said he had always known, from the start of Tunisia’s political “transition”, that he would have to seek alliances, and in the first government Ennahda ruled alongside a centre-left secular party.

“We thought having a government with a majority would be enough,” he said. “Then we realised we needed more: we needed consensus.”

The difference between Tunisia and Egypt here is stark. While, as he points out, Egypt, Syria and Iraq are all more complex and difficult countries than Tunisia, the fact remains that Ennahda downplayed Islamist demands when the country drew up a constitution, the resulting document winning 94 per cent of the votes in the country’s constitutional assembly.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which won the presidency by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, tried to force through an Islamist constitution by decree. It was toppled by a coup seven months later.

Syria and Libya, meanwhile, appear not to know the meaning of the word consensus.

Mr Ghannouchi, perhaps oddly, is still optimistic about the future of democracy in the Arab world. “The year 2011 was a leap from tyranny in the Arab world,” he said. “History shows that the transition to democracy is not always linear – the transitions that took place in France and Britain took over 100 years.”

Whether the Arab world can last that long is another question. Mr Bouazizi’s family, whose initial fame turned to hostility in their community, could not: his mother and one sister moved to Canada, while another, Samia, now works in Tunis. She is the first to say that her brother’s death has been hijacked by politics and ideology.

“His death is destiny and I accept it,” she said at a café in the city. “But if he were here he would be the first in the street to ask for more dignity.

“My brother created something that greedy people are trying to destroy in the region. My brother is a lover of life and he would have rejected both the stupid politicians and death-loving extremists. My brother died for dignity not for wealth or an ideology.”

At the end of all the wars, few may end up remembering either him or Mrs Hamdy. The two began at opposite sides, but both now seem telescoped out of proportion by a history that became perverse beyond all recognition.

“Mohammed Bouazizi and I are both victims,” Mrs Hamdy said. “He lost his life and my life is not the same any more.

“When I look at the region and my country, I regret it all. Death everywhere and extremism blooming, and killing beautiful souls.”