International reactions to the Arab Spring

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The international reactions to the Arab Spring have been disparate, including calls for expanded liberties and civil rights in many authoritarian countries of the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and 2011.

Contents

General statements

Varying reactions

Harsh government responses to protests in many Arab countries have met international condemnation. [22] [23] [24]

France, the former colonial ruler of Tunisia, refused to denounce President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's attempt to disperse demonstrators in his country by force in January 2011 prior to the Tunisian revolution; Foreign Affairs Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said the French "must not stand out as lesson-givers" in Tunisia, while the French minister for agriculture defended Ben Ali, saying, "President Ben Ali is someone who's frequently judged badly, [but] he's done a lot of things." [25] The French government later took a leading role in supporting the opposition to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya, forming a tripartite alliance with the United Kingdom and Lebanon on the United Nations Security Council to successfully lobby for international military intervention, [26] [27] though it was Peru that was the first country to sever bilateral relations with the government in Tripoli over the crackdown on Libyan protesters in February 2011. [28]

The government of Iran condemned the Egyptian government's response to protests [ citation needed ] and was harshly critical of the Bahraini monarchy's reaction to the demonstrations in the Gulf archipelago, [29] but has virtually ignored President Bashar al-Assad's violent suppression of protests during the uprising in Syria [30] [31] and according to the U.S. government, has possibly provided aid to suppressing the protests. [32]

Conversely, while Qatar staked out its place as a primary backer of the attempted revolution against Gaddafi and a "key ally" of the partially recognized National Transitional Council, the provisional government of the self-declared Libyan Republic, [33] [34] it steadfastly supported the supranational Gulf Co-operation Council in its military intervention to quell protests in neighboring Bahrain, contributing troops to the Peninsula Shield Force mission there. [35]

The government of Morocco received praise from the U.S. government for its response to major protests, [36] [37] though the U.S. condemned the governments of Tunisia, [38] Libya, [39] Egypt, [40] Bahrain, [41] [42] Syria, [43] [44] and Yemen [45] for their actions in dealing with demonstrators. However, it has stopped short of calling for regime change in Bahrain alone among those states. [46]

Saudi Arabia was one of the first Arab countries to publicly condemn the Syrian government over its reaction to the uprising in that country, with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia giving a televised speech shortly after midnight on 8 August to announce the recall of its ambassador from Damascus and warn authorities to institute major reforms and stop all violence. [47] However, it was also the largest contributor of troops to GCC operations to help suppress the Bahraini uprising, [48] as well as a vocal supporter of Bahrain's embattled monarchy amidst protests and violence in Manama. [49] Saudi Arabia also supported a GCC-sponsored transition agreement to bring peace to Yemen and phase out the incumbent government there, which was repeatedly rebuffed despite Saudi pressure. [50] After an attempt on Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's life, Saudi authorities allowed the wounded leader to undergo several months of hospital treatment in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, but eventually allowed him to return home despite earlier suggestions that he would be contained in Saudi Arabia. [51] [52]

Reactions around the world turned many into activists from afar when the effects of the Arab Spring began to affect their loved ones still in these countries. After seeing the personal nature of the repression, many who were abroad began to speak out, creating a global network that would help hold these leaders accountable. While many citizens abroad typically feared coming out against their own government, by the time the Libyan government began to fall most were actively speaking against their government's oppression. [53]

For other countries in the region, foreign policy has been heavily shaped by the Arab Spring. For example, many in Turkey are calling for "zero problems with neighbors" approach which helps unify MENA countries by ending warfare and struggle across the region. This is a proactive response which recognizes a country like Turkey's unique influence in the region. [54]

Interest in the Arab spring had a different tone around the world. In South Korea, for example, there was political coverage that focused on the causes of the Arab Spring but never really went into in depth analysis. This important difference is between the United States vested interest in the country compared to other countries across the globe. South Korea, an ever-increasing world power, has very little use in covering this story. Most of the newspapers took tones that reflected a possible sentiment similar to what people would feel in China and in North Korea but never really sought far to compare the two. Political coverage in these far reaching parts of the globe was dim because of the lack of national interest in these states. [55]

In March 2011, just months after the protests started in Tunisia, Hillary Clinton commented on worldwide news sources, "Al Jazeera has been the leader in that are literally changing people's minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective." Clinton's State Department even began tweeting in Arabic and Persian. [56] Global communication has become more prominent after Arab Spring to connect us all.

A divided international response can be seen between the United States and Russia. While the United States openly supported any group looking for democratic representation, Russia took a much more hands-off approach. Russia, an authoritarian state, has been seen supporting other authoritarian regimes in more geopolitically convenient areas. Northern Africa did not pose enough of a threat or advantage for Russia to become actively involved in the regime change, but nevertheless was a point of contention between Russia and the west. [57]

Criticism of responses

Some scholars and pundits, including Slavoj Žižek and Robert Fisk, have argued that the range of international reactions to the various protests, uprisings, and revolutions associated with the Arab Spring demonstrate hypocrisy on the part of governments in the Western world and elsewhere. Žižek, a Slovenian political theorist, charged that the "western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism". [58]

When asked if he considered Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to be an "authoritarian ruler" prior to the popular movement that ousted him from power, the United States' President Barack Obama replied that he tends "not to use labels for folks", called him a "stalwart ally in many respects to the United States", and claimed that Mubarak "has been a force for stability and good in the region", something American journalist Jeremy Scahill criticized. [59] Scahill also claimed that "the day before US missiles began raining down on ... Libya ... security forces under the control of Yemen's US-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, massacred more than fifty people who were participating in an overwhelmingly peaceful protest". [60] The Obama administration has since called for Saleh to hand over power to his vice president and commit to a transition to plural democracy for Yemen, [45] but its comparative sluggishness in supporting the Yemeni protest movement versus its swift backing of Libyan protesters and rebel fighters faced some criticism. [61] American academic and investigative journalist Nir Rosen also criticized the U.S. government for more than doubling military assistance to Yemen between 2009 and 2010. [62]

During international operations in Libya, Irish journalist Patrick Cockburn called NATO's concern for Libyans "deeply hypocritical ... when they ignore or promote savage repression in Bahrain". [63] Veteran British journalist Robert Fisk also condemned the relative lack of concern on the part of Western leaders over the security crackdown in Bahrain. [64]

American philosopher and counterculture commentator Noam Chomsky claimed, "The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. The reason is very simple. Across the region, an overwhelming majority of the population regards the United States as the main threat to their interests." [65] It is known that the United States supported the regimes of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen all the way up to and during the protests. The United States strategically changed its support when it became evident that the regimes were losing power. [66] Israel considered these countries regimes a "strategic treasure." [67]

Western leaders were not the only targets of rebuke from commentators for their reactions to the Arab Spring. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah's response to the uprisings also came under criticism, with Iranian academic Hamid Dabashi penning an op-ed for Al Jazeera in which he called Nasrallah a "once mighty warrior being bypassed by the force of history", accusing him of hypocrisy for supporting Shia protesters in Egypt and Bahrain but backing the "murderous" Shia government in Syria against peaceful demonstrators. Nasrallah, Dabashi claimed, had started out as a supporter of the Arab Spring when it appeared it would affect only allies of the West, but was deliberately silent on protests, including the Iranian protests, that sought to topple anti-Western governments. [68]

British journalist Brian Whitaker said King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia "[betrayed] more than a little irony" in his condemnation of Bashar al-Assad's regime, considering Saudi Arabia's dearth of political freedom. He concluded that the Saudi monarchy's positioning on the Arab Spring protests was part of ongoing efforts to outmanoeuvre and isolate its traditional rival Iran, an ally of Assad, as well as to limit the actual amount of political liberalisation occurring in the region. Whitaker criticised the Saudi-sponsored GCC initiative in Yemen, claiming it "was meant to prevent a genuine revolution, not help to accomplish it", and called Saudi Arabia's actions amidst the regional unrest a "monarchical insurance scheme" evident in its intervention to support the Bahraini monarchy. [69]

World economy

As many of the world's major oil producing countries are in the Middle East, the unrest has caused a rise in oil prices. The International Monetary Fund accordingly revised its forecast for 2011 oil prices to reflect a higher price, and also reported that food prices could also increase. [70] Additionally, concerns about Egypt's Suez Canal had raised shipping and oil prices. [71]

The World Bank's June 2011 Global Economic Prospects report estimated that the turmoil may reduce growth in the region by 1 percent [72] or more, with countries such as Egypt and Tunisia registering growth rates 3 or more percentage points lower than what they would have been in the absence of the crises. Overall GDP in Egypt is projected to rise 1.0 percent in 2011. [73]

Media coverage

Al Jazeera won praise[ by whom? ] for its coverage of the protests, angering the governments in which countries faced protests. [74] United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked: "Al Jazeera has been the leader in that they are literally changing people's minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective". She also stated that "viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials..." [75]

The use of social media has been extensive. [76] [77] As one Egyptian activist tweeted during the protests, "We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world". [78] Internet censorship has also been a factor, and entire nation states were taken almost completely offline. [79]

In an attempt to quantify the likelihood of regime change in Arab World countries following the protests, The Economist newspaper created its "Shoe-Thrower's index". [80] The name is derived from shoeing: throwing shoes, showing the sole of one's shoe, or using shoes to insult, all of which are forms of protest primarily associated with the Arab world. [81] [82] According to their index, Yemen has the highest likelihood of a revolution, whereas Qatar has the lowest. The index factors in the number of years the current ruler has been in power, the percentage of the population consisting of young people, per capita GDP, democracy index, political corruption, and freedom of the press. BBC News used its own "Unrest Index" in its analysis of the protests. [83]

Alen Mattich of the Wall Street Journal created the "Revolting Index" to rate the likelihood of revolts by state based on "social unfairness, propensity to revolt, and a trigger". Mattich readily admits, however, that "the methodology is crude. There's been no econometric work done". [84]

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The Arab world, formally the Arab homeland, also known as the Arab nation, the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, comprises a large group of countries, mainly located in Western Asia and Northern Africa. While the majority of people in the Arab world are ethnically Arab, there are also significant populations of other ethnic groups such as Berbers, Kurds, Somalis and Nubians, among other groups. Arabic is used as the lingua franca throughout the Arab world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Middle East and North Africa</span> Geographic region

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), also referred to as West Asia and North Africa (WANA) or South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), is a geographic region which comprises the Middle East and North Africa together. However, it is widely considered to be a more defined and apolitical alternative to the concept of the Greater Middle East, which comprises the bulk of the Muslim world. The region has no standardized definition and groupings may vary, but the term typically includes countries like Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE, and Yemen.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arab Spring</span> Protests and revolutions in the Arab world in the 2010s

The Arab Spring or the First Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and economic stagnation. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām!.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">2011 Bahraini uprising</span> Anti-government protests

The 2011Bahraini uprising was a series of anti-government protests in Bahrain led by the Shia-dominant and some Sunni minority Bahraini opposition from 2011 until 2014. The protests were inspired by the unrest of the 2011 Arab Spring and protests in Tunisia and Egypt and escalated to daily clashes after the Bahraini government repressed the revolt with the support of the Gulf Cooperation Council and Peninsula Shield Force. The Bahraini protests were a series of demonstrations, amounting to a sustained campaign of non-violent civil disobedience and some violent resistance in the Persian Gulf country of Bahrain. As part of the revolutionary wave of protests in the Middle East and North Africa following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, the Bahraini protests were initially aimed at achieving greater political freedom and equality for the 70% Shia population.

<i>Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam</i> Political slogan used during the Arab Spring

Ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām is a political slogan associated with the Arab Spring. The slogan first emerged during the Tunisian Revolution. The chant echoed at Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis for weeks. The slogan also became used frequently during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. It was the most frequent slogan, both in graffiti and in chants in rallies, during the revolution in Egypt.

International reactions to the Syrian civil war ranged from support for the government to calls for the government to dissolve. The Arab League, United Nations and Western governments in 2011 quickly condemned the Syrian government's response to the protests which later evolved into the Syrian civil war as overly heavy-handed and violent. Many Middle Eastern governments initially expressed support for the government and its "security measures", but as the death toll mounted, especially in Hama, they switched to a more balanced approach, criticizing violence from both government and protesters. Russia and China vetoed two attempts at United Nations Security Council sanctions against the Syrian government.

The international reactions to the 2011 Bahraini uprising include responses by supranational organisations, non-governmental organisations, media organisations, and both the governments and civil populaces, like of fellow sovereign states to the protests and uprising in Bahrain during the Arab Spring. The small island nation's territorial position in the Persian Gulf not only makes it a key contending regional power but also determines its geostrategic position as a buffer between the Arab World and Iran. Hence, the geostrategic implications aid in explaining international responses to the uprising in Bahrain. Accordingly, as a proxy state between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Bahrain's domestic politics is both wittingly and unavoidably shaped by regional forces and variables that determine the country's response to internal and external pressures.

International reactions to the Yemeni revolution were not as pronounced as reactions to similar events during the Arab Spring, but a number of governments and organisations made statements on Yemen before and after the departure of longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh from power in February 2012.

The level of Internet censorship in the Arab Spring was escalated. Lack of Internet freedom was a tactic employed by authorities to quell protests. Rulers and governments across the Arab world utilized the law, technology, and violence to control what was being posted on and disseminated through the Internet. In Egypt, Libya, and Syria, the populations witnessed full Internet shutdowns as their respective governments attempted to quell protests. In Tunisia, the government of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali hacked into and stole passwords from citizens' Facebook accounts. In Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, bloggers and "netizens" were arrested and some are alleged to have been killed. The developments since the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010 have raised the issue of Internet access as a human right and have revealed the type of power certain authoritarian governments retain over the people and the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in the Arab Spring</span>

Women played a variety of roles in the Arab Spring, but its impact on women and their rights is unclear. The Arab Spring was a series of demonstrations, protests, and civil wars against authoritarian regimes that started in Tunisia and spread to much of the Arab world. The leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were overthrown; Bahrain has experienced sustained civil disorder, and the protests in Syria have become a civil war. Other Arab countries experienced protests as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arab Winter</span> Violence and instability after the 2010–12 Arab Spring

The Arab Winter is a term referring to the resurgence of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism in some Arab countries in the 2010s in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The term "Arab Winter" refers to the events across Arab League countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including the Syrian civil war, the Iraqi insurgency and the subsequent War in Iraq, the Egyptian Crisis, the Libyan crisis including both the first and second Libyan civil wars, and the Yemeni crisis including the Yemeni civil war.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict</span> Indirect conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia

Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in an ongoing struggle for influence in the Middle East and other regions of the Muslim world. The two countries have provided varying degrees of support to opposing sides in nearby conflicts, including the civil wars in Syria and Yemen; and disputes in Bahrain, Lebanon, Qatar, and Iraq. The struggle also extends to disputes or broader competition in other countries globally including in West, North and East Africa, South, Central, Southeast Asia, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomatic conflict</span> Diplomatic issue between Qatar and Saudi Arabia

The Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomatic conflict refers to the ongoing struggle for regional influence between Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), both of which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is sometimes called the New Arab Cold War. Bilateral relations have been especially strained since the beginning of the Arab Spring, that left a power vacuum both states sought to fill, with Qatar being supportive of the revolutionary wave and Saudi Arabia opposing it. Both states are allies of the United States, and have avoided direct conflict with one another.

This article overviews the 2010s in Middle Eastern political history

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