A decade ago, crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo to demand the expulsion of Egypt’s American-backed strongman, President Hosni Mubarak. In Washington, President Barack Obama made a fatal decision and asked him to leave power.
The setbacks of other Arab rulers were rapid, said Mr. Obama recalls in his recent memoirs.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates – a small country with an extraordinary army built on American weapons and training – told the president that he no longer considered the United States a reliable partner .
It was a ‘warning’, said Mr. Obama wrote, that “the old order did not intend to give up power without a fight.”
Ten years later, the clashes between the old order and the popular uprisings in the Middle East in 2011, known as the Arab Spring, left much of the region in smoldering ruins.
Wars in Libya and Yemen have reduced the countries to shattered mosaics of rival militias. Autocrats hold on to power in Egypt, Syria and Bahrain and sniff out all battles of opposition. Tunisia, considered the success of the uprisings, has struggled to reap the benefits of democracy as its founders of the economy.
The hope for a new era of freedom and democracy that has risen across the region has been largely shattered. The United States was an unreliable ally. And other powers that have vigorously intervened to wipe out the insurgency and bend the region to their will – Iran, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates – have only grown stronger.
“People now know very well that no one is going to help them, that they have to help themselves and that the countries they once sought to change are part of the problem,” said Amr Darrag, who served as minister in the democratically elected government that Egypt barely ruled for a year before being overthrown by the military in 2013. ‘The forces that oppose change in our region are numerous and they have many common interests that have enabled them to unite against any form of positive change. ”
The greatest hope expressed by intellectuals in Washington and the region is that the Arab Spring has at least given people a taste of the possibility of democracy. And if the underlying inequality and oppression that led to the uprising only got worse, uprisings are likely to return, as has been the case recently in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq.
The spark that ignited the Arab Spring was a fruit seller in a poor Tunisian city who simply could not stand it anymore after the police slapped him and confiscated his electronic scales. He set himself on fire, and his death crystallized frustrations with rulers across the region, who ruled by force, enriched their comrades and left the masses in poverty, corruption and weak government.
After Tunisian protesters forced the country’s autocrat, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, into exile, protests erupted in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. In early 2012, three other heads of state were expelled, but the gloomy sense of national power would not last.
Elections in Egypt empowered the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood until the military stepped in to overthrow President Mohamed Morsi and take power for himself.
In Libya, the United States and allied countries bombed the forces of Muammar el-Qaddafi and supported the rebels. But the opposition failed to unite, in part because local rivals supported rival factions, leaving the country divided.
In Bahrain, Saudi tanks helped quell an uprising by the Shiite Muslim majority against the Sunni monarchy.
In Yemen, a long-time strongman left power, but then, along with rebels who took over the capital, began a civil war and a bomb attack by a Saudi-led coalition that resulted in a horrific humanitarian crisis.
Syria represents in many ways the worst-case scenario: an uprising that turned into a civil war that destroyed entire cities, opened the door to the Islamic State and other jihadists, sent millions of refugees abroad and intervened through a series of international powers. After all, President Bashar al-Assad remains in power.
“Since the Arab Spring, everything has gotten worse,” said Mohamed Saleh, a Syrian writer from Homs. “What has changed is that we have more foreign powers controlling Syria. Syria is devastated and more divided. ”
Those who took part in the uprisings recalled them with a mixture of bitterness and nostalgia, citing various reasons for their failure: inconsistent support from the West, intervention by other powers and the inability of protesters to switch to politics, entrenched challenge elites and repair rifts in their societies.
“We were not mature enough, we did not know what conflict was, what democracy was, what politics was,” said Bashar Eltalhi, who provided technical support to Libya’s rebels and first transitional government and now works as a conflict analyst. “We thought we just had to get rid of the boogeyman, but we did not realize that the boogeyman had spread his magic in all of us.”
Many accused the United States of not doing enough to support the insurgency for fear of harming their own interests.
In Egypt, the Obama administration refused to call the 2013 military takeover a coup, preferring to protect relations with the Egyptian military, even after it shot dead hundreds of protesters against the group. In Libya, Western involvement declined after the death of Mr. El-Qaddafi, who contributed to the collapse of the planned political transition. In Syria, the United States has shifted its focus from supporting the opposition to the fight against the Islamic State to withdraw most of its powers under President Trump.
Other forces, often closer to the region and with less concern for democracy, rushed in to fill the vacuum.
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates supported the monarchy in Bahrain and specialized the Egyptian government and embarked on a more unapologetic-interventionist approach.
“We have come a long way since the 1970s, when we were the little duckling that needed America’s protection and America’s permission,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirates political scientist. “There is a certain amount of confidence, which has led to the region being more assertive and more independent of America and other powers.”
Former US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were surprised in 2014 when the Emirates bombed the Libyan capital, Tripoli, with US-made weapons and equipment, violating the terms of sale and US policy. But when the United States complained, the Emirates pushed back, angry that the United States did not support their chosen strongman, one of the officials said.
A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment.
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates gave little notice to US officials before launching a military campaign in Yemen in 2015 and have since provided financial support to, and expanded their influence over, Jordan’s king and the new government of Sudan.
In Syria, Iran militants flew to seize the forces of Mr. To strengthen al-Assad, Russia sent its army to bomb rebel strongholds and Turkey turned the parts of the north of the country into a de facto protectorate. The most active talks on the future of the country are now among the three countries, while the West sits on the sidelines and haunts the destruction among Syrians.
But many veterans of the Arab Spring argue that with unfinished business from the uprisings, unfinished pro-democracy movements are likely to return.
“Anyone who says the Arab Spring is dead does not know the history of people’s struggle,” said Tawakkul Karman, who won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Yemen’s uprising. “The dreams of our people have not died and neither will they die.”
The region’s population is very young; most of its governments have failed to ensure economic security; and an entire generation remembers the thrill of taking to the streets and jumping on pictures of dictators.
In recent years, Arab spring movements against corruption and weak government have driven out the autocrats in Algeria and Sudan. Similar protests rocked Iraq and Lebanon, but they did not change their complex, sectarian political systems because they were not a single despot to focus their anger on.
In the long run, low oil prices and growing populations could leave Gulf states with less money for foreign intervention, and veteran revolutionaries could pass on the lessons of their failures to younger activists.
Tarek el-Menshawy, 39, who owns a car repair shop in Cairo, looks back on the protests a decade ago as the best days of his life. He sadly remembers bursting into tears when he and thousands of others finally overcame police ties and reached Tahrir Square.
The revolution may have failed, he said, but it still accomplished something powerful.
“The younger generations saw what happened,” he said. ‘It’s like a shark when they smell blood. Freedom is like this. We smelled it once, so we will keep trying. ”
His friend Ahmed Radwan, 33, said that if an uprising broke out against the current government, he would gladly protest again. But he is convinced that another uprising would be useless.
“We do not have the tools,” he said. “They are much stronger.”
Ben Hubbard reports from Beirut, Lebanon, and David D. Kirkpatrick of New York. Vivian Yee reported from Cairo, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.