What lessons Al Sharaa’s Syria can learn from the Arab Spring fiasco? (Part I)
Have the Syrians learned the lessons of the failed 2011 uprisings in some Arab countries - best known as the Arab Spring?
Has new strongman Ahmed Al Sharaa, once an “Islamist” militia-man hated and wanted by the West, gauged the failed (and fallen) transitions in the other Arab Spring countries?
What can Tunisia, Libya and Egypt teach the new Syria?
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The amounts of weapons, light and heavy, left by Al Assad regime in Syria in December 2024 were by way bigger and more widespread around the country than those Muammar Gaddafi left in Libya in 2011.
In Syria, armed groups and well-trained militia-men drastically developed in numbers, the quality of training and the gravity of agendas between 2011 and 2025.
The first post-Assad, de facto, regime in Damascus did was to dissolve the Assad-era armed forces (military, paramilitary and police), integrate almost all the armed factions into a new, national army and launch a nation-wide, still ongoing, campaign to collect the hidden, spilled-over weaponry and to arrest Assad’s fugitive officers.
In Libya, most of the post-Gaddafi weaponry was taken by civilians: tribes, political groups, business-owners. They used them by themselves, their families and their supporter, mostly against similar Libyan civilians that have nothing to do with wars and weapons before 2011.
The result is that the danger of armed clashes and security instability is still high today in Libya while the security situation has gone from a real, 11-year-long, civil war to an almost total stability in Syria where the new regime seems to have controlled, militarily and politically, the whole liberated territory (except the Kurdish north-east).
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Tunisia had lost its Revolution the same year it happened, in 2011.
By appointing Beji Caid Essebsi Prime Minister and enacting the High Transitional Authority, with Yadh Ben Achour as chair, Tunisians signed the quick death of their historic uprising.
Essebsi is one of the key “old guards” of Tunisia’s long-time rulers Habib Bourguiba and Zinelabidine Ben Ali, unconditionally pro-France and with an anti-democracy political career.
About 90% of the Transition Authority’s members are pro-Ben Ali, pro-France, extreme-leftists, or all of those at the same time.
Tunisia still suffers today from Essebsi’s economic and political decisions, accentuated by the governments and parliaments of the post-2011 period and in which he directly contributed by returning as President in 2014.
Ben Achour’s commission “recycled” Ben Ali’s men into the post-Revolution Tunisia and drafted the infamous, malicious Electoral Law that immediately spoiled the political life by giving birth to a chaotic parliament where no political group can ever rule and where any corrupt person can sit.
One of the biggest mistakes of the Tunisian Revolution is that Tunisians failed to hold the Ben Ali-era officials, parties and organizations accountable. Worse, they awarded them key positions and let them occupy the media to…teach Tunisia lessons!
The result is known.
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Elections alone do not guarantee prosperity
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In 2011 and 2012, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt held free and transparent elections, lauded by everybody in the “free world”. We know their aftermath!
In the 2025 Syria, Ahmed Al Sharaa seemed aware of the importance of political institutions on the future of his country. So he chose to take his time to enact the foundations of a democratic process before talking about elections or constitutions.
He postponed to an undefined date a landmark national dialogue conference.
Instead, he multiplied meetings and talks with representatives of the main ethnic, regional and political groups.
Via his fresh Foreign minister Al Shibani, he sent comforting messages to Syria’s neighbors, most of whom were allies to Bashar Al Assad.
Al Sharaa regime seemed aware of the geo-political priorities: relieving Syria from 60 years of the Assad rule, saving the country’s economy and stopping the tensions with its neighbors are more urgent than enacting institutions that can do more harm than good.
Choosing the adequate political and electoral system for post-dictatorship Syria is a real challenge.
A challenge that Tunisia clearly missed, paving the way very early for the return of authoritarianism.
In Egypt, an army general, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, toppled in 2013 the president who was democratically elected in 2011 and the same president who trusted him to the top of the Egyptian army.?
Like Egypt, Syria not only has borders with Israel but they are potentially at war.
The total control of the Egyptian army over the country’s politics, economy and media has always been explained by Egypt’s status as “a frontline country”.
This status has nothing to do with reality as Egypt and Sisi’s regime have become Israel’s “most trusted allies”, to copy Netanyahu. But it was the alibi used by the Western powers and some Gulf Monarchies to justify the total destruction of Egypt’s post-2011 democratic gains, the systematic crack-down on liberties and the collapse of the economy.
As a potential “frontline country”, will Al Sharaa’s Syria be able to balance its serious security challenges (the Kurdish issue, a possible return of ISIS, counter-revolutionary forces, Israel’s permanent threat) with a secular, democratic and inclusive rule?
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It is early to answer these questions and to confirm/deny the above hypotheses.
Time will tell if the path(s) chosen by Syria’s new rulers is the good one or not.
Good for the Syrians, for the Middle East and for democracy in the Arab world.
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#Election #Revolution #Democracy #Transition #Economy #Military #Arms #Business
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