The Arab Spring is far from over

My friend Ahmed Maher was released from prison on January 5. Ahmed was the leader of the April 6 Youth Movement that organized the Egyptian revolution against the then President Hosni Mubarak, six years ago this month. He served three years in jail for protesting. Now he is out on a probation of three years, and will have to spend the hours between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. at his local police station. Today, there is not much reason for him to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the Arab Spring.

I was there when Ahmed turned himself in to the court. The April 6 Youth Movement had asked me to be an “international witness.” We thought this would be a formality, but the police had set a trap: They started to chase and beat everyone standing around the court and within 10 minutes more than 20 people had broken arms and legs. I ran as hard as I could and was lucky to escape. This was November 2013. It seemed like the end of the Arab Spring.

What were once high hopes for a new, free and democratic Arab World have turned into civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq. Instead of democracies, countries like Egypt, Bahrain and even Morocco have become even more repressive dictatorships.

In Egypt alone, no less than 40,000 people have been detained since President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July 2013. All independent television stations have been closed and critical journalists arrested. Most NGOs have been shut down or can simply no longer function. And then there is the Islamic State, the most barbaric outcome of the chaos that followed the 2011 uprisings.

In short, the basic drivers of the Arab Spring remain. Indeed, they have become more acute. And even though some people have had enough of chaos and protesting, others are not giving up.

These may seem like more than enough reasons to call the Arab Spring an utter failure. But, in truth, it depends on how carefully you look at what is happening. On the surface, the political upheavals look like failed revolts against dictatorships. But dig a bit deeper into the societies of these Arab countries and there are reasons to believe what we see is not a simple revolt, but an epochal revolution.

If that is true, today’s depressing situation is not the end; it’s just one of the stages the region is going through on its way to a better future. That, at least, is one of the lessons we could learn from history.

Take the French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, didn’t come out of nowhere. In the 18th century, the population of France had grown by 50 percent. The large young generation couldn’t find jobs because the economic system was stuck. The people were getting poorer, while the grandees who populated the court in Versailles were excessively rich. There was no freedom of religion, and the Church was amassing power and wealth. The French Revolution didn’t stop when Napoleon took power in 1799. It took 80 years and 12 constitutions before France became a stable democracy in 1870.

There are reasons to believe the Arab World is going through a similar revolutionary evolution. The first reason is demographics. The region’s population has doubled in the three decades since 1980. And it continues to grow quickly. In Egypt alone, the population grew by 1 million people in the last six months. One third of the Arab population is younger than 30. Youth unemployment stands at 30 percent. In many Arab countries, it’s impossible for a man to marry without first buying an apartment. No job means no apartment, and thus no marriage and no sex. Imagine the frustration.

The second reason is economic collapse. Wars and terrorist attacks in the region have decimated tourism, one of the most important sources of income. The main sponsor of the region, Saudi Arabia, saw its economy plunge because of falling oil prices. For the first time, the Saudi government had to introduce taxes. In Egypt, inflation is reaching 30 percent and even much higher on imported products. There is shortage of sugar and oil, basic food products for the large group of poor Egyptians. With little foreign investment and hardly any foreign currency available, importing is becoming impossible, wrecking vital parts of the economy.

Third, the repression is even worse than before the Arab Spring. The best-known example is the Italian doctoral researcher Giulio Regeni, who was kidnapped and tortured to death, allegedly by the Egyptian secret services. Hundreds of innocent Egyptians have encountered a similar fate. At the same time, the Egyptian police has failed to protect the Christian minority against sectarian violence. Censorship of media and even social media is worse than it was six years ago in all Arab countries, except Tunisia and Lebanon. Maybe it’s good to remember it was primarily police brutality that triggered the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria in 2010-2011.

Will Iraq remain one country or will it fall apart? What will happen in Algeria when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika dies? Is the Saudi regime sustainable if it runs out of money?

In short, the basic drivers of the Arab Spring remain. Indeed, they have become more acute. And even though some people have had enough of chaos and protesting, others are not giving up. In Morocco, a police accident that resulted in the death of a fish vendor in October 2016 brought huge masses into the streets. In Syria, protests against the Assad regime erupted in many cities immediately after the ceasefire, negotiated by Russia and Turkey last month.

There are still other big question marks: Will Iraq remain one country or will it fall apart? What will happen in Algeria when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika dies? Is the Saudi regime sustainable if it runs out of money? Will the largely Sunni Arab population accept the growing regional power of Iran?

Finally, there remains the issue of religion. After the fall of President Morsi in 2013, and with him the entire Muslim Brotherhood in the region, many Arab Muslims started to question the state of Islam. When the Islamic State declared their caliphate one year later, the calls for religious reform became more prominent. The debate on the future of Islam seems inevitable, even though religious institutions are trying to stop it. Together with demographics, economics and politics, this existential battle will be explosive. We should fasten our seat belts because the Arab Revolution has in fact only just begun.

Koert Debeuf is the director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy Europe and the author of “Inside the Arab Revolution. Three years on the Front Line of the Arab Spring.”