The Arab Spring: Over a Year Later

The popular revolts in the Arab World are still ongoing and their final outcome remains elusive. Three major “development deficits” amount at least in part for the widespread frustration which caused them—governance, knowledge and women's empowerment. Though many began as unorganised, peaceful and spontaneous protests driven by largely secular or religiously moderate agents, some turned violent as an effect of heavy handed government repression and foreign covert or overt armed support. A tactical agreement between the US led Western alliance and the conservative Arab monarchies against the states that were or are still not “pro NATO” such as Libya, Syria and Iran has morphed the reawakening process externally into an international power struggle for control of the region's energy resources, and internally into a sectarian conflict. Given the lack of democratic institutions and traditions and the appeal of political Islam for the masses, most of the affected states will probably adopt religiously dominated dispensations.