The Arab Spring

I came across this term whilst reading the news recently. The Arab Spring – It sounded quaint and placid till I read what it meant – it is used to describe the revolt and armed intervention that is sweeping the Arab world. The term is meant to imply that akin to a caterpillar bursting out of its cocoon to become a beautiful butterfly, the Arab nations too are undergoing a transformation that will give birth to a better reality.

I think the term and its connotations are highly delusional.

The Arab world is blessed. It is sitting on an abundance of crude oil that makes it coveted by one and all. That same blessing is a curse as it makes the Arab world a target for others. A while ago Israel came under scrutiny for attacking a ship of peaceful protestors. Among Israel’s critics was Egypt. Now – several months on, everyone has forgotten the gross act of misconduct shown by the Israelis are the Arab world is thrown into turmoil … is this really an accident? A coincidence?

Israel is a country with the US, the UN and most of the western country’s at its beck and call. It acts without regard for the safety of its Arab neighbours and with wilful neglect of international laws and reprimands. It is a country that is very capable of sparking revolt and discontent in Egypt and watching it spread like wildfire to Libya Syria and Tunisia in the name of freedom.

What freedom? Removing Gaddafi or any other dictator will make no difference if the US and allied troops will continue their gunfire indiscriminately and set up base in these countries with the same flimsy excuse of peacekeeping that ruined Iraq in the not to distant past.

The governments of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and Syria have long been a crumbling facade that burdened their own people. The Arab league was a joke and no help was forthcoming from the wealthy gulf region. The revolution was inevitable but was it really sparked by a street vendor being slapped by an armed guard at his apple cart? Or was this initiated at a much higher level to create a chaos only the US could come to save?

Yes Gaddafi is massacring his own people. Yes the Arab world is failing to intervene. Yes the western countries are suitably equipped to fight on behalf of the Libyan people. But then? What happens when Gaddafi is gone? Will the allied forces just get up and leave? We have seen the results in Iraq, nearly a decade on, there is much talk of leaving the Iraqis to self govern but the actions are far from matching those words. Allied troops will not leave the Libyans to enjoy their victory over Gaddafi. There will be no victory for the occupants of countries which go from the oppression of a dictator to the ‘care’ of the allied forces.

The US, France and the UK have sent in their best in an effort to ‘protect’ the Libyan people and yet the daily death toll is at a shocking high as the rebels seem to kill indiscriminately on the ground and the allied forces shoot indiscriminately from the air.

Where is the help for the woman captured at the border and raped to the point where her only option was to cry out in a hotel room full of Journalists? Where is the help for women and children fleeing their homes as gunfire rings out indiscriminately and they are caught in the crossfire. They are people like you and me. They didn’t ask for war. They didn’t ask for bloodshed. And they didn’t ask to go from Gaddafi to US occupation.

There is a new wave of Facebooking and tweeting revolutionists in the Arab countries. Men and women who know they have the potential to create and run a democratic and peaceful Islamic society without oppression, without dictatorship and without the US. Question is… will they ever get a chance?

As onlookers to a spate of wars and a continuous unrest resulting in waves of discontent, we can’t do much except cry out in protest at the injustice of hegemony and its effect on those who just want to live a normal life. And its hard not to draw comparisons to Palestine – a country that has been suffering this way for far too long with no end in sight.