generalspeaking

Some Things Change, Some Become Worse

Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

Graffiti on a wall in Benghazi, Libya, mocks disposed leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Now that the results of the Arab Spring protests are well underway, it's instructive to look at those results, with the jaundiced eye of one who expects little of social or political value to come the way of those who initiated the protests against the indignities they lived under. Their detested tyrants who made a mockery of good governance have been opposed and some have been dethroned. So what is in store for those who finally summoned the will to speak out forcefully and often violently for themselves?

In Tunisia, the first of the countries to experience change, Tunisians were able to vote for the first time in their lives. One interviewee said he had voted previously, on one other occasion, but there had been but one name on the ballot. Typical of sham 'democratic' elections wherever they were held in the Middle East, and where Hosni Mubarak garnered 86% of the popular 'vote' in Egypt. Egyptians now are awaiting the ruling military's next call, the promised elections within the next 6, 9, 24 months.

People thought they were freer to express their frustrations. Unfortunately when they venture out to those same 'freedom' and 'liberty' squares they are ushered away from them, and not too gently. Their less-than-esteemed dictators and tyrants may have been deposed, but in their place wait the political and ideological parties that they had energetically kept under control, incarcerated. Islamism is on the rise everywhere in the Middle East and North Africa.

The populations of those countries may yet live to rue the impulse that gave them the courage to confront the authority of their oppressors and demand change. Their demands for employment, for lower costs of goods, of food and energy, may in the end result in nothing but more of the same. If Islamist governments opposed to associations with the West prevail, needed investment and tourism will fail.

Libya's Moammar Gadhafi's mutilated body is now being triumphantly viewed by the people he once dominated. The National Transition Council has declared that a new government will be pieced together, it will be a democratic one. Also emphasized was that Libya is an Islamic State, and Sharia law will prevail. One reporter in Tripoli recounted hearing children playing and shouting that Libyan Jews not be permitted return to Libya.

In formerly largely secular Tunisia, the small Jewish community is facing the prospect of a diminished freedom to remain and live peaceably in the only country they have ever known, as the Islamist Ennhada party is on course to garner at least a quarter of the seats in a constitutional assembly. Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali had, like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, suppressed his country's Islamist movements, imprisoning and torturing Islamist supporters.

In Syria the regime's critics, anti-government protesters and militias, want to see President Bashar al-Assad go. They've called for his death, in response to his harsh military crack-downs on protesters who have been largely peaceful. Video images of Moammar Gadhafi's violent overthrow and subsequent execution are very popular in Syria, where the anti-Assad coalition would like to emulate the Libyans, but without the assistance of withholding NATO.

In Syria, scorn has been heaped on Bashar al-Assad for brutalizing Syrian rebels, and torturing civilians. People shout that he should be making accommodation with Syrians, not butchering them; he should be battling Israel for the return of the Golan Heights, not his own people who want nothing but a life free of his damnable manipulative constraints. All of these dictators have blamed the influence of the West, of Israel, of terrorist Islamists.

They all pointed to the presence of Israel in the Middle East as a baneful destabilizing presence, a danger to Arabic and Islamic unity, a pestilence that should be removed. But they had also learned, over a succession of futile, humiliating war losses, to live with the presence of Israel. Now that their rule has been imperilled, their populations which they had tyrannized, are expressing their hatred for Israel and for Jews.

The most execrable, demeaning contempt they could envision for their hated tyrant Gadhafi, was to portray him in a cartoon graffiti wearing the Star of David on his headgear. Some things may change in the Middle East, and possibly, none of them ultimately for the better.

Labels: Middle East, Political Realities

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, October 23, 2011