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"That whole Arab Spring business has been a mess, right from the start
Senior American diplomat
And it suggested that the old systems would simply collapse in the face of
the popular will.
Only days after the street vendor Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi burned
himself to death, goaded beyond endurance by petty tyranny in the town
of Sidi Bouzid, the Tunisian government started to collapse.
Soon the regimes in Algeria, Jordan and Oman had announced reforms or
even changes of government.
Yet after that the hope for an Arab version of 1989 faded.
The Muslim Brotherhood was elected to fill the power vacuum, disrupting
the delicate balance between Islamic faith and the principles of a secular
state.
The police and army, which had supported Mubarak and protected
secularism, remained as strong as ever.
True, people from Tunisia to Yemen were united in a desire for greater
freedom.
But the upheavals brought two conflicting principles into play: the belief
that secularism had to be defended on the one hand, and the desire for a
more fundamental implementation of Islam on the other.
The result has been great bitterness and violence, and in Syria and Iraq it
has brought about the rise of Islamic State, (IS), the most aggressive and
violent political and religious movement of At first, its extraordinary
brutality seemed to work, as IS murdered its opponents in cold blood and
rejoiced in it.
Since then, its enemies have fought with far greater determination.
Similarly, the Arab Spring, if it ever existed, has long ago come to a halt in
every Arab country.
Libya has been ruined by the continuing chaos which followed the
revolution against Gadaffi.
Western countries, though they won't say so, have decided they would
rather have him than IS.
Iraq too has managed to weather the IS storm, and democracy even
seems to be surviving there after all the horrors Iraq has endured since
being invaded by the US and Britain in 2003.
The political system in Jordan has been under threat, but it is still
surviving.
Lebanon has held together. Algeria and Tunisia have settled down. Turkey,
watching from the sidelines, has often been worried, but has survived
unscarred.
President Obama, who warned Bashir Assad not to use chemical weapons
against the insurgents then did nothing when he did, has never managed
to shake off the appearance of weakness and indecision.
A vote a year later to bomb Islamic State has not really changed that
perception.
"That whole Arab Spring business has been a mess, right from the start,"
said a senior American diplomat recently.