Arabian Thaw

 

The now very discredited Arab Spring, heralded well past due as over, entered into an Arab Winter of less clear - other than that, unlike real and proverbial winters, such was not necessarily coming, and certainly not without a summer; cyclical histories being not in the fashion in a post-Fukuyama age still heralding to Fukuyama-ish creeds and principles - proportions, awakens the question of terminology now seemingly abandoned in all but name. If the core events of late 2010 to early 2011, perhaps extended to the late 2011 with the full blowout of military auto-kleptocrats (or tawagit, to borrow the bountiful if not auspicious dictionary of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its clients and many, virulent metastases) into a reality of exile (Ben Ali), downfall (Mubarak), death (Qathafi/Gaddafi/Khadafi) or the consummation of democratic, multi-party elections reaching even the largest Arab state (as opposed to the multi-candidate ones of 2005, now expanded to even the other half of the old United Arab Republic) or the degradation of full-scale warfare, lasting much longer, and doom impending (Assad, Saleh), as well as the end of those who had undergone many of these and decried of as part of this fallen epoch, rather than the pre-spoken shards of its fallout - in name, citizen al Awlaki and the notoriously citizenshipless Bin Ladin - are to be described as a spring, and the part-predictable, part-parodically obtuse wall of concrete faced by this seemingly unstoppable truck of popular rebellion encourage (but alas, do not force) us to dwell on the question of this winter, and when - if the metaphor is intended as serious - a blazing and equally extended summer will arrive. The climatological being opposed to the political, in this sense. 

But if we are not of the Hegelian mold, as so very few Westerners are, we must consider the possibility not only that a wave of liberal, constitutional republics emerging - yes, even in Saudi Arabia, and finally displacing this third and presumably last state, and paragon, of the Sauds - but the continuous movements towards "something else" eeking out a cry of change, but not in direction of the west but inwards, towards a core Islamic myth or, dare we speak it again, another caliphate? 

Analysing the separate cases, we may see the bonds and scars of colonial and post-colonial division, with the individual states of the Arab League being as illogical as individually tragic, now with a long term of 

What then is the cry of "the people", and which promises are the river they are built to cross in this auspicious year? If bread, peace and land were the phrases that won the day in 1917 - and much of the century - for the Soviets, what is now in demand? As often, if not ever and always, the materialist notions are universal, and those to harness the dream of them, those surest to triumph. This is not least true of the Islamists, this elusive term, 

The days of glory. The days of hope. The best of times; may they now arrive anew, for what we sow may be yet too bitter to understand. Yet renewed waves of clashes with the authority now supposedly subservient to their wishes will not end, the bleating of the fickle throng never be made blank again. 

Never abed, never to rest. A night of vigil that spanned a decade. The tumultuous changes undergoing across North Africa and the Middle East began a new era, and whatever its merits have never truly died down, even in the poster child of the Arab revolutions of 2011 and beyond. When is the appropriate "end date" of these events, begun by a frustrated vegetable grocer in late days of the first decade? 

Was the promise of a blossoming Arab Spring then a particular case of Tunisia, and its positive vision only to be finalised there? We should be careful about the merits of this singular, surviving child of the groundbreaking (and very deadly) street protests of late 2010 and early 2011, which turned the old Caliphate on its head, and destroyed and severely mauled both its incumbents and many of its new names. 

It is unlikely, and must never be believed, that the Brotherhood would accept the Western-liberal-constitutional system now putting on such a show, with the best backing from Western military and diplomatic power, after such a thrashing, yet again. But if their credo, the cries for which so many have screamed into death - or at least offered suffused throat-gargling cries and kicking feet - would be a primitive emirate. The labels "Islamist", "Salafi" and similar are often used not even sloppily, and although they intersect - the parliamentary results of 2012 being key - with each other and with frequent jihadist activity, the yet elusive Mr. Zawahiri and his Egyptian Jihad once elevating the mediocre pharaoh Mubarak (an ill-fitting name) being a good old example here, and testament to the cross-membership in even these most dogmatic and virulent of civil society activity.