Eighteen months ago, I commented as follows in this newspaper (“Arab Spring, or Arab Winter?”): “Twelve months after the first awakening of the Arab Spring, it may be pertinent to take stock. There can be no doubt that we have witnessed – and will continue to see at first hand – the most turbulent of upheavals in our region for decades, and no end is in sight. The question Malta must ask itself is: will these changes be for the better, or are we about to move into an Arab Winter? We would be foolish and unrealistic to forget that we live in a turbulent region.....If history teaches us anything, it is that the future is unpredictable and that the law of unintended consequences often applies.”
The political upheavals that convulsed the Middle East almost three ago astonished the world and prompted hopes that generations of misgovernment and oppression in this region were about to end. Today, that optimism has been dashed. While it is beyond doubt that the Middle East is changing, the key questions now are what forces will prevail, and what freedoms will actually take root? These issues are still shrouded in a deep fog of uncertainty.
In Libya, it may now be seen that NATO and the West, including Malta, took sides in a civil war, rather than espousing anything that could genuinely be called liberty – despite the welcome over-throw of Gadaffi. Libya is still emerging painfully from its civil war. The revolution’s tri-colour may have replaced Gadaffi’s green flags, but the picture is still evolving. Unruly tribal gangs, pro-Gadaffi factions and Islamist extremists continue to jockey for position. We could be discovering that – as the West did with such deadly consequences in Afghanistan - arming fanatical jihadists and tribesmen indiscriminately leads only to further strife and long-term instability.
We must continue to be prudent. None more so than in our evolving relationship with the new, but still unknown, Libya. The Libyan Government, which Malta has recognised, has a massive task in building a working government. The establishment of law and order is proving more difficult than was thought as different militias and vigilante groups manoeuvre for power. The establishment of the rule of law – the bed-rock of a functioning democracy – and solid institutions of government will take a long time, perhaps many decades.
In Tunisia, to take another example close to home, while there can be little sympathy for its former dictator, Ben Ali, democracy may be less likely to prevail than those who wish to create an Islamic state and impose Sharia law. Indeed, it seems highly possible that throughout the Middle East the most likely beneficiaries of the turmoil will be Islamist factions, whose rule may prove both domestically unenlightened and illiberal, as well as unfriendly towards the West.
This is the over-riding concern that has up to now prevented the United States and the West from intervening in the bloody three-year civil war in Syria. America, badly burned by Iraq, is now warier of foreign engagements, especially in Muslim countries. The use of chemical weapons by President Assad in Syria has changed the calculations, but it seems highly unlikely that any intervention by the West will consist of any more than exemplary and surgical retribution. (It remains highly uncertain how any American intervention will play out – even if it ever does.) Engagement on the ground has been ruled out. For all its horrors and rising death tolls – 100,000 have died in this civil war - the fight between the rebels and President Assad is a stalemate. Neither side can vanquish the other militarily. Only a political settlement uniting Syria's rival parties and religious factions can bring lasting peace.
Despite our eyes being currently fixed on Syria, perhaps the most spectacular failure of the so-called 'Arab Spring' has been Egypt. Egypt, the largest country in the Arab world, was always the most important testing ground for the possible renaissance of the region. Its politics were complex and difficult. But it had people of talent and education and a rich civil society. It seemed possible two years ago that, with goodwill and determination, the Egyptians could make the transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
Instead, the move towards democracy has been still-born, beaten to death by the stupidity of the Muslim Brotherhood and the brutality of the Egyptian Army. Neither appeared able to make the compromises that a democracy requires of its leaders and protagonists. Had now-deposed President Morsi realised that winning elections was only the beginning, not the end, of the political process, and had he understood that people vote for all kinds of reasons, he would not have pushed though a constitution that was illiberal and potentially theocratic. The educated and aspirational youth of Egypt felt that they had lost all that they had gained in deposing the Mubarak regime, and in July Mr Morsi was overthrown. However it is dressed up, a democratically elected president in Egypt has been overthrown by street demonstrations and an army coup.
One of three things may now happen. First, the military can reassume authoritarian power and crush any resistance with torture and imprisonment. It is conceivable that in time an enlightened general might find a way to hand power back. Secondly, Egypt might be in for another few decades of military rule. And thirdly – worst of all – Egypt's Islamists, who amount in number to hundreds of thousands, could conclude that, rather like Syria, only violence works in their country. They will then find the means to set off an insurgency like the one that killed tens of thousands in Algeria in the 1990s after the military intervened to prevent an Islamist election victory. The difference this time will be that the battle is most unlikely to be contained within Egypt's national borders. It would become a catastrophe, not just for Egyptians and probably not just for the region, but for all of us.
If the Arab Winter, which had already shown the first vestigial signs of frost in Libya, Tunisia, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East takes hold in Cairo, we are all likely to shiver.
The euphoria of the Arab Spring over two years ago has given way to Winter, but it remains in Malta’s vital self-interest to continue to foster good relations – with whichever government may eventually transpire, whether Islamic, fundamentalist or secular and wherever on the North African littoral. Malta must continue to play its limited hand carefully. The measure of Malta’s success in this period of instability and uncertainty will lie in striking a balance between active and hard-nosed support for the freedom of the Arab people and strict neutrality and non-involvement in nations' internal politics, or the politics of the region.