There is little doubt that the Arab Spring has, on the whole, been disappointing. Syria, the country which has suffered the most since uprisings began in the Arab world three years ago, remains in the grip of a brutal civil war that has killed about 130,000 people.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has committed crimes against humanity; he has presided over the killing and torture of his opponents, or perceived opponents; he has indiscriminately bombed civilian areas; used chemical weapons; and starved entire populations as a punishment for supporting the Opposition.
To complicate matters, al-Qaeda is now well established in Syria and the moderate rebels are caught in the middle between Assad’s forces and the jihadists. Peace talks were held in Geneva recently and, while little was achieved, the two sides at least agreed to a temporary truce in Homs where the UN is now evacuating civilians.
Ennahda, Tunisia’s Islamist party, accepted that there should be full rights for women and minorities
Egypt is back to square one. Hosni Mubarak resigned as President three years ago in response to mass protests against his 30-year rule. His successor, Mohamed Morsi, elected in June 2012, turned out to be a hopeless leader who catered only to his Muslim Brotherhood supporters and who divided the nation instead of uniting it.
Morsi was ousted by the army in July 2013 after massive demonstrations similar to the ones that led to Mubarak’s fall two years earlier. The Muslim Brotherhood was subsequently banned and Morsi and some of his colleagues from the leadership of the Brotherhood were taken to court on a number of charges. Meanwhile acts of terrorism in Egypt have increased since Morsi’s ouster.
A new Constitution, without doubt an improvement to the one adopted by Morsi when he was President, was last month approved by over 90 per cent of the electorate in a popular referendum, which had a turnout of about 55 per cent.
However, the new Constitution strengthens the role of the army and gives it the right to approve the appointment of the Defence Minister. It is expected that army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will now run for the presidency, and will probably win.
Libya, where the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi and his regime can only be described as a good thing, is still going through a very difficult period and the government is not in full control of the country. Various rebel groups still control vast areas of territory and have refused to recognise the authority of the central government.
There is even a possibility that the country will be split altogether between East and West.
Last Thursday night, for example, Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s plane landed in Malta from Zurich because it could not land at Tripoli airport due to security reasons. Meanwhile late on Thursday evening unidentified gunmen tried to storm the Libyan army headquarters in Tripoli, clashing with government soldiers.
In other Arab countries, the Arab Spring is basically on hold. In Bahrain, for example, the response to protests against the ruling family, which took place between 2011 and 2013, was a brutal police crackdown. The Sunni-led Bahrain government has yet to accommodate the demands of the majority Shi’ite population. Morocco and Jordan have undergone some important political reforms, and hopefully these will continue. Yemen, on the other hand, is still faced with a major al-Qaeda insurgency.
There is, however, one bright spark in the Arab world, which could be a model for the entire region: Tunisia, which gave birth to the Arab Spring and which seems to have made real progress towards establishing a genuine democracy.
Tunisia also experienced its fair share of problems in the aftermath of the ouster of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and, at one time, seemed to be hopelessly polarised between secularists and Islamists. The country, furthermore, also suffered a wave of Salafist-inspired violence.
However, the country’s different political parties recently agreed to a new Constitution (officially adopted last Friday), in which all sides acknowledged the need to compromise, and new elections will he held soon. Ennahda, Tunisia’s Islamist party, accepted that there should be full rights for women and minorities, while Tunisia’s secularists gave their consent for Islam to be declared the national religion.
It is true that Tunisia’s economic and social set-up as well as its strong middle class made the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy easier than in other Arab countries, but the importance of the recent agreement on the Constitution should not be underestimated.
The deal shows that Islamists and secularists can work together, and that both sides need to compromise in order for a proper democracy to be established. Earlier this month, for example, Ennahda Prime Minister Ali Larayedh stepped down in the national interest and was replaced by Mehdi Jomaa, who heads the newly-appointed caretaker government.
Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi ensured that he did not make the same mistakes made in Egypt by Mohamed Morsi, who wanted to impose his set of Islamic values on the entire country, and which led to mass protests and his ouster by the army.
The international community, principally the EU (France in particular), now needs to offer the country economic and other support in order to help this fragile democracy. Tunisia, after all, still faces a number of challenges such as high unemployment and a terrorist threat from the militant Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, which was behind the killing of prominent secular left-wing politicians last year.
It is of utmost importance that this country succeeds and proves to the Arab world that Islamists and secularists can work together, and that democracy, pluralism and the rule of law is indeed possible in Muslim countries.