The souring of the Arab Spring

Last week, in the House of Lords, I was able to raise concerns over the rising problem of attacks upon Christians in Egypt, and on the need for the promotion of the safety of all citizens of minority faiths in Egypt. Since the revolution ousted the Mubarak regime, we have seen increased sectarian violence by Islamic extremists directed not just against the Coptic Christian minority, who have long suffered marginalization and discrimination, but against the Sufi and Shia Muslim communities too.

The threat faced by minorities throughout the region is one reason why the gushing enthusiasm displayed by Western leaders for the ‘Arab Spring’ already appears naïve. While it is too early to say what forms of government will result from the Arab Spring protests, the portents are not encouraging. What is clear, too, is that the uprisings have resulted in very different outcomes in different countries. In Tunisia, where protests triggered the general Arab Spring phenomenon, the old regime quickly fell. In Syria and in Libya, government security forces fought back ferociously, resulting in terrible violence in the case of Syria, and full-scale civil war (and Western intervention) in Libya. In Yemen, protests have inflamed an already deeply confused and highly unstable situation.

In Bahrain, events followed a different pattern again. There, members of the Shia majority rose up against their Sunni rulers. When the Bahraini security forces proved inadequate to the task of suppressing the dissent, they were joined by Saudi forces who speedily finished the task. Some of the protesters have since received very harsh sentences, up to and including life imprisonment. The West, frightened of increased Iranian influence (Tehran has long harboured ambitions in Bahrain), has been conspicuous by its lack of criticism at the crushing of the Bahraini protests. Evidently, while the West talks big in its support for ‘democracy’, popular uprisings in Bahrain were the ‘wrong sort of democracy’.

Therein lies the problem. There is no evidence that revolutions in the Arab world will result in non-sectarian, pluralist democracies. On the contrary, opinion polling shows that in most Arab countries there exists strong popular support for destroying the state of Israel, enforcing Sharia law, and for making conversion from Islam punishable, even by death. Governments accurately reflecting these strands of public opinion would be disastrous for religious and ethnic minorities, let alone for broader regional security. At least in the short term, I’m afraid that the Arab Spring is in danger of turning into a long, hot, Arab Summer.