Who killed the “Arab Spring”?

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of pan-Arab al-Hayat, penned this think piece in Arabic

Where are the young men and women who nearly three years ago crammed the plazas and public squares calling for the downfall of who they called the tyrant or the dictator or the despot?

Do they remember the victory signs they raised when they heard news of his escape or his standing down or his killing?

Do they recall the dreams they dared reflect upon in those days and their talk of democracy, state institutions, transparency, the transfer of power and the respect of human rights?

Was their behavior actually motivated by their fervor, their innocence or their naïveté?

Were they alien to their communities and ignorant of the degree of injustice permeating their depths and the wells of hatred waiting for an opportunity to explode?

Did it escape them that the problem is basically cultural rather than political and that it is not enough to open the ballot boxes to turn over the page of the past?

Did it escape them as well that centuries of darkness contributed to the incarceration of the Arab intellect and its disablement, rendering the Arab individual incapable of handling the keys to the future?

I have been obsessed for weeks by an irritating question: “Who killed the ‘Arab Spring’?”

That’s why I seize the opportunity of coming across anyone of the major players in the said “Spring” to ask for his assessment – especially now that some of the said ‘Spring’s’ theaters shut out the advocates of democracy and of modern state-building.

I will not name my respondents because our discussions were not to be published.

The man played an important role in his country’s “Arab Spring” when he dealt a painful blow to the despot under whose portrait he served for several years.

I asked him the question, “Who killed the ‘Arab Spring’?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“What you call the ‘Spring’ may have come early, before our societies became ready to embrace a transformation of this magnitude.

“It turned out we still live in the depths of history.

“With the tyrants’ fall, our societies began spewing all the blood, pus, hatreds, coercions and reprisals that accumulated in their guts.

“I think the transitional phase will be daunting and extended. In any case the French Revolution took eight decades before settling down.”

He added:

“We are in a terrible state of underdevelopment. Watch the screens. A university professor talks as if he has yet to enter the era of reading and writing.

“Look at nation-states, like for example Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Bahrain that are now paying the price of what took place between Ali and Muawiyah.

“We discuss globalization and technology and then go to sleep in the caves of history.

“Our capitals are closer to abattoirs overflowing with suicide bombers and assassins.

“Our countries fail to provide regular power supplies to their citizens.

“Our societies participated in killing the ‘Arab Spring’ by letting the prisoners of history take the lead.”

Another player put forward a different reading.

He said the most prominent killers of the “Arab Spring” are those who rushed to mold it, casting an image of their own interests.

He said the West acted as a crook, especially Obama’s America. Washington wanted the phenomenon to serve the policy she adopted years earlier – in essence the policy of promoting to power what she calls moderate Islam, thinking that the latter could contain terror.

He added: The Muslim Brothers, who were the better organized and widespread movement in the community, took this as an historic opportunity to devour it all.

He also said Turkey played a role in killing the “Arab Spring” when she considered a “Brotherhood Spring” victory gives her a trump card in her strategic wrestling with Iran.

He said Qatar used her financial might and international relations to prop up the “Brotherhood Spring” alongside Turkey.

Russia, he remarked was focusing on stifling the “Muslim Spring” lest it turned into a card in the hands of the West or spread to her vicinity.

He said Russia found in Syria’s events a chance to kill the “Arab Spring.” Iran was of the same opinion but for different purposes.

The two men’s words helped me understand what is now going on in more than one Arab country.

I got convinced the “Arab Spring” killers were more than one.

Most probably a stormy season is just about to kick off – a long and painful transition season.

The first condition for moving into the future is to exit the caves of history and bury the illusions of ready-made solutions.

A millennium of isolation

The late theologian Yunus Khalis

By Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s authoritative political analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news channel, writing in Arabic today for the mass circulation newspaper al-Hayat

I sat on the floor opposite the late Mawlawi Yunus Khalis, God bless his soul, in a modest abode in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.

It was 1989 and I wanted to pick the Afghan theologian-cum-commander’s brains about democracy and elections.

It was the period when the Afghans and their allies in Islamabad and Riyadh were looking for the best way to seal the Afghans’ jihad with a glorious victory and a happy ending that would bring peace, harmony and prosperity to the people of Afghanistan after the Soviets’ defeat there.

Afghanistan’s political map was very simple.

It was based on power, money, arms, mobilization and special links to the region’s various intelligence services.

Since all these elements were readily available to all and sundry, each of the Afghan parties could claim the measures of supremacy and leadership.

The result was chronic discord among Afghan leaders interspersed with “plebeian” clashes and mysterious assassinations, which impeded the “happy ending” of the Afghan jihad.

Afghans lacked the culture of “elections.”

Prevailing were the old traditional tools of mass mobilization and clout on parochial, tribal, sectarian or ethnic grounds.

Once political Islam entered the scene, partisan ideology followed – until it also fragmented among the sides.

Someone suggested “elections” as a solution. The question was how? Who would oversee elections in an untested environment and a war-torn country?

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who proposed the elections, was himself a political party leader. He did not have everyone’s trust.

Being hungry for power, he did not hesitate taking “exceptional measures” – assassinations for instance – to settle his differences with others.

But there were more vital questions concerning elections and democracy, which is what I heard from Mawlawi Yunus Khalis when he criticized voting as the key instrument of democracy by saying: “How can you equate the ballot of the virtuous scholar with the ballot of the immoral evildoer?”

The question was akin to our surroundings. It belonged to a world of yore and had nothing to do with the present except for the two-wheeled Doshka heavy machinegun sitting on the roof, next to a relaxed turbaned fighter overlooking the valley.

On the valley’s opposite side, exhausted government soldiers were taking a breather from a decade-long war.

The Afghans never agreed an answer to the theologian-cum-commander’s question and did not opt for elections to settle their differences, keeping up their internecine strife until this day.

Yunus Khalis did not study at the Sorbonne or work in international organizations.

He was a religious scholar who studied at a Haqqania maddrassa (religious school), which formed most Taliban leaders.

The school offers simple and direct answers to modern-day problems revolving around two concepts of halal (lawful, based on the Quran) and haram (forbidden by Islamic law) with minimal diligence, reflection and insight.

The result was the Taliban’s failure and ceaseless conflicts in Afghanistan.

Going back to our Arab world, which is relatively more “advanced” than Afghanistan and where liberals and rights advocates have been championing democracy and human rights, we find that 30 months into what we dreamt up as the Arabs’ spring, democracy has hit rock bottom. The ruling elites are wary of it -- of its results rather -- and the marginalized forces have almost lost confidence in it.

But, as Winston Churchill once said, democracy is better than those other forms of government that have been tried. In the Arab republics, democracy is better than a military coup mounted by a “nationalist officer” keen to put his country on the right democratic path.

The “nationalist officer” will always resort to exceptional steps, having applied them in the first place -- by using force instead of the constitution -- to inaugurate his rule. Problem is exceptional steps always hinge on interest and politics. Decisions made outside the rule of law are justified as being “well-intentioned,” except that they open the door to new problems.

Moreover, the outcome of exceptional steps is neither assured nor predictable. The call for a demonstration in support of a step can produce calm, victory and empowerment. But it could also end in bloodletting that leaves an open wound in the nation and its people’s body.

Democracy could turn out the wrong president or a one-sided parliament. But democracy has inbuilt corrective mechanisms that can go as far as impeaching the president and disbanding parliament.

There’s always room for a “second chance” in a democracy. But the second chance under extraordinary measures depends on the whim of the “nationalist officer.” As an individual, the latter is apt to make right and wrong decisions and to be swayed by his entourage and circles.

The big question raised at the onset of the Arab Spring is decidedly apropos: Why did its high winds sweep the republics and caress the monarchies as a breeze?

The answer lies in the republics’ social contract, which states: “The people are the source of all powers.”

Fact is the people discovered that the “nationalist officer” is the source of all powers. The find infuriated them. They revolted at a historic moment and have yet to mollify.

Democracy takes pride of place in the social contract. But it was defaced and turned into a “décor” by regimes prior to the Arab Spring.

Today, Arab liberal and secular forces are disfiguring democracy beyond recognition after it worked in political Islam’s favor. They shelved their “revolutionary purity” and accepted to go along with rationed democracy.

Is political Islam the problem of democracy in the Arab world? Or is an authoritarian culture permeating Arab minds?

These are hypothetical questions that need not be raised or answered. Neither political Islam will disappear, nor will authoritarianism prevail again.

What is certain until further notice is that we will learn democracy the hard way – by trial and error and by bitter experiences that is.

Our masses will face off and we will test rationed democracy, exclusion and forgery pending an awakening liable to challenge all this and persist in the endeavor, assisted by the force of history.

These are the same aspiring forces that took to the streets in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt two-and-a-half years ago despite their torment and frustrations.

Some came from political Islam, despite its tribulations and immaturity. Others came from “deep states” that refuse to give up and go away. And the rest were trying to find their way after a millennium of isolation.

Egypt’s chief justice sworn in as interim president

Interim President Mansour (top & center below) was sworn in at the High Constitutional Court

Adly Mansour, head of Egypt’s High Constitutional Court, was sworn in as interim president today after the army ousted and detained Mohamed Morsi, ending the Islamist president’s first year in office.

"I swear by Almighty God that I will uphold the republican system, respect the constitution and the law, uphold the interests of the people, protect the nation’s independence and the safety of its land," the oath said.

Judge Mansour took the oath of office at a ceremony in the High Constitutional Court (HCC), which was broadcast live on national television.

The swearing-in came after armed forces chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced Morsi’s overthrow on state television late on Wednesday, citing his inability to end the country’s deepening political crisis.

In his speech, Gen. Sisi laid out details of the roadmap for a political transition, chiefly:

• Temporary suspension of the current [Islamist-drafted] constitution
• Setting up a committee to amend controversial articles in the provisionally suspended constitution
• Appointment of the head of Egypt's HCC as interim president, pending early presidential elections
• Formation of a new government of technocrats
• Mandating the HCC to hasten the passing of electoral law to allow for parliamentary elections
• Laying down a media code of ethics to guarantee the media's professionalism
• Draw up a committee to foster "national reconciliation."

The security forces meantime began rounding up senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Morsi belongs.

These include the Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy Khairat El-Shater, Saad al-Katatni, head of the ousted president’s Freedom and Justice Party, and Rashad al-Bayoumi, another Brotherhood deputy leader.

But army spokesperson Ahmed Ali warned Thursday, “The armed forces will not allow anyone to insult, provoke or abuse those belonging to the Islamist current. They are all Egypt’s sons. The armed forces have the same amount of esteem, respect and love for them as the rest.”

Morsi’s administration unraveled last night after defying the army’s 48-hour ultimatum to come to terms with the opposition.

Morsi’s opponents had accused him of failing the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak by concentrating power in the hands of his Muslim Brotherhood.

His supporters say he inherited many problems from a corrupt regime, and that he should have been allowed to complete his term, which was to have run until 2016.

The Cairo stock market gained LE20 billion ($2.85 billion) in the first hours of trading today as Egyptian investors reacted euphorically to news of Morsi's ouster overnight.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" over Morsi’s ouster and urged a swift return to democratic rule.

Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad, fighting to crush a 27-month-old revolt against four decades of rule by him and his late father, said the upheaval in Egypt was a defeat for political Islam.

"Whoever brings religion to use in politics or in favour of one group at the expense of another will fall anywhere in the world," Assad told his state-run al-Thawra newspaper.

"The summary of what is happening in Egypt is the fall of what is called political Islam."

The Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood became one of the most powerful factions behind the mostly Sunni Muslim uprising against Assad, who belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and is being helped by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia.

Rosana Boumounsef, in her column today for the independent Beirut daily an-Nahar, says Egypt’s second revolution pulls the plug on using the governance of political Islam as a scarecrow.

She writes:

Ironically, in justifying the course of the latest Arab revolutions, the West expected the upheavals to convulse for many years before producing results that fully meet peoples’ aspirations.

Experience and history prove a revolution does not begin and then cool off before ending with parliamentary or presidential elections – especially when such ballots do not fulfill the people’s expectations.

Many diplomats recognize they were thunderstruck when they saw millions of Egyptians take to the streets to get rid of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and challenge Muslim Brotherhood rule.

The diplomats were equally stunned by Egypt’s first [25 January 2011] revolution against President Hosni Mubarak despite international empathy for Egypt’s mounting economic and financial woes.

It is therefore imperative -- in light of Egypt’s second [30 June 2013] revolution -- that the West and its analysts and researchers rethink to the hilt their theories about the region going down the road of militant political Islam.

They fantasized about the Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt being replicated in Tunisia, Syria and all eventual Arab Spring countries.

It wasn’t long before they were proven wrong.

Liberals are still a cut above the rest in devout and Muslim Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood did not know how to address Egypt’s multifaceted problems, which are fundamentally economic and administrative. The Brotherhood was caught up in fake successes by laying hands on the seats of power.

The Western powers and Russia will find it difficult from now on to invoke worries that militant or fundamentalist Islamic rule, by the likes of al-Qaeda and its followers, could replace the Syrian regime once agreement is reached on its removal.

Egypt’s second revolution was not only against the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was also a slap in the face of the Obama Administration, which backed and lobbied for the Brotherhood to uphold America and Israel’s interests. 

“The Battle for Qusayr is Sidi Bouzid”

Le Monde on use of chemicals in Damascus (top) and Yara Abbas, who was killed near Qusayr

Top Syria news at this writing:

• President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have repeatedly used chemical weapons against rebel fighters in Damascus, according to first-hand accounts in France's Le Monde newspaper.
• EU foreign ministers are set to discuss British and French calls for them to ease sanctions against Syria so weapons can be supplied to the rebels.
• Yara Abbas, a prominent female war reporter for Syria’s state-run Al-Ikhbariyah TV, was killed near Dabaa airbase, a short distance from Qusayr. Rebels held the town of Qusayr in Homs province for a year but came under attack by Damascus government and Lebanese Hezbollah forces last week.

“The Battle for Qusayr is Sidi Bouzid,” according to Dr. Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian-born American scholar who is a senior fellow at the Baker Institute, the United States Institute of Peace and at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

He writes in his think piece today for Saudi Asharq Alawsat:

The battle for Qusayr raging between Hezbollah and Syrian opposition forces is identical to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunis, which sparked the Arab Spring uprising in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria.

Qusayr is Bouzid in the sense of sparking off a new conflict in the Arab region the framework of which was set by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in his Saturday speech.

I must say his address was – in terms of its bona fide implications – the most important I heard in the two years since Egypt’s late Vice President Omar Suleiman announced President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

Nasrallah’s address effectively outlined the nature of the dawning Sunni-Shiite struggle, the opening round of which is the battle for Qusayr that he vowed to win – win against Sunnis, of course.

To think otherwise is to try hiding the sun with one finger.

Fact is we’re into a second wave of the Arab Spring in Qusayr, but in reverse.

Instead of being between oppositions and regimes, the face-off becomes one between Shiites and Sunnis in order to draw the strategic features of the Arab region for years to come.

The Arab region from hereon will be captive to an ideological clash between Iran-led Shiite supremacy and a Sunni axis comprising Turkey and key Gulf Arab states. Egypt, with a massive Sunni majority (of about 77 million), will remain a bystander.

The Syria war between the Assad army and the opposition showed the former to have serious shortcomings. Its combat capabilities are not what Iran and Hezbollah expected as a backup.

Part of the reasons for Hezbollah and Iran’s intervention is to plug loopholes in the Syrian army and restructure it. But more important is the end result of the three-way Iran-Syria-Hezbollah cooperation in terms of military interoperability (or compatibility in computer parlance).

How would this military coordination between Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah forces affect Geneva-2 and Assad’s exit?

Judging from Nasrallah’s speech, the Shiites have won -- through Iran – a seat at the Geneva-2 negotiating table.

As regards the agenda, the Shiites would be speaking as the regime’s regional sponsor, backed by an international patron represented by Russia’s Sergei Lavrov.

Sadly, after Nasrallah’s discourse, Syrian regime loyalists and opponents will have no say in Geneva-2. The negotiations will be between the two principals: Russia and America.

At the same time, there will be indirect talks between Iran, as the regime’s regional sponsor, and the opposition’s regional patron represented by Turkey and key Gulf Arab states. No wonder the opposition is headquartered in Istanbul, offsetting Iran’s overt political and military defense of the regime.

Post Nasrallah’s speech, the Geneva-2 scenarios are three:

1. A roadmap for a transitional government in Syria
2. A replay of the January 1991 talks between James Baker and Tariq Aziz preceding the war to liberate Kuwait. In that case, the U.S.-European-Arab side would announce the failure of diplomacy and recourse to regime change by force, except there is no appetite for this in the West
3. The West regurgitates what it used to say regarding the Palestine Question: “Look, we are trying. We don’t like what we’re seeing.” The means the West adopts a moral but apolitical position.

Geneva-2 will most probably get nowhere or maybe reach half-solutions, allowing the Shiite-Sunni war’s opening tactical and symbolic battle to continue in Qusayr.

The battle for Qusayr is Bouzid in reverse.

Post-Qusayr, the battle will not be over control of state authority, such as in the Arab Spring states, but over regional hegemony.

The Arab Spring is accordingly moving backwards to a primitive Sunni-Shiite millennium-old conflict.

Syria takes its war to Turkey

Devastation in Reyhanli (Photos from the Turkish daily, Today's Zaman)

At least 40 people were killed and dozens injured this afternoon when two car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, along Turkey’s southern border with Syria.

Interior Minister Muammer Güler told private NTV channel at least 100 people were injured, 29 of them critically.

He said the two car bombs went off near the town’s municipality and post offices.

The blasts came shortly after the Local Coordination Committees for Syria -- an opposition group -- reported that Damascus government forces had fired several shells toward Reyhanli, which is in Turkey's southern province of Hatay and hosts a large number of Syrian refugees.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking from Berlin, called the incident a “provocation,” saying, “There may be some powers who want to sabotage peace in Turkey.”

In initial comments, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “We have recently launched a settlement process [to address the conflict in the southeast] and those who cannot digest this new period and the atmosphere of freedom in our country can be involved in such attacks."

"Another sensitive issue,” he added, “is that Hatay province is on the border with Syria, these actions may have been taken to provoke those sensitivities.”

Erdogan said this week that Turkey would support a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone in Syria and warned that Damascus crossed President Barack Obama's "red line" on the use of chemical weapons long ago. 

Erdogan is due to meet Obama in Washington in five days’ time, on May 16. 

Turkey’s ruling AKP returns to its roots

Editorially, Turkey under Erdogan is the theme of Saudi author and analyst Jamal Khashoggi’s weekly column today for pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper.

He penned his think piece in Arabic after spending a few days in Ankara:

Raising his hands high in prayer, the old traditional Turkish way of beseeching God’s guidance, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç invited the group of Arab journalists he had addressed to recite al-Fatiha, the opening seven verses of the Quran.

The journalists were guests of the Prime Minister’s Press Office and Anadolu Agency in Ankara, where they spent a few days meeting ruling party officials and the premier’s close aides.

Arınç’s welcoming words were fervent and emotional.

“Come to us, we both share the same values and aspirations,” he said.

“Come to us,” he repeated while spelling out other reasons for Arab-Turkish cooperation. The words “Islam,” “Arab Spring” “dignity… justice… freedom” kept recurring as well before he made an oblique reference to Egypt’s Tahrir Square by saying, “We will all sit one day close by Tahrir Square.”

A renowned Arab author and former editor-in-chief looked at me and said with a smile on his face, “Does he think we’re all Muslim Brothers?”

“It’s their heydays; brace for the upcoming,” I let slip.

I did not see or hear members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) wax lyrical about Islamism as a form of identity politics as much as I did during my latest Turkey visit.

I watched their political ascent to power since Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan led his National Salvation Party and then Refah (Welfare) Party. The secular authorities repeatedly closed both down.

Erbakan passed away in 2001, months before the Islamic-leaning AKP was founded. It won the following year’s general election by a landslide and has never looked back since, bringing Turkey unprecedented stability, economic growth and prosperity.

Party leaders were previously cautious not to overplay their Islamic streaks. The “Deep State” was lying in wait for them.

Emrullah İşler, a party member of parliament who graduated from King Saud University in Riyadh and is fluent in Arabic, told me: “Five years ago (in mid-2008), in spite of the AKP having a parliamentary majority and an enviable economic record, the party staved off dissolution by not more than one Constitutional Court vote.”

İşler is confident this won’t happen again. The Old Guards in the judiciary, the army and the security services are out. “Our biggest achievement is to have built a democratic state,” he told me. “Each branch of the state is committed to its charge. The army is there to defend the nation. The judiciary is now apolitical. The government is governing. There are no more conspiracies.”

Furthermore, the Ergenekon trials of people long believed to have been pulling the strings of power are underway.

I looked at an Egyptian colleague, hoping he would have heard the conversation. What İşler said is what Egypt needs.

Turan Kışlakçı, head of the Press Office’s Arabic department, quotes Prime Minister Erdogan as saying, “We earned the competence – which means ‘rule’ in Turkish – five years back. Today, we’re competent.”

Is it so, or is it the Arab Spring?

Cemalettin Haşimi, a special advisor to the Prime Minister overseeing the Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), states clearly, “The AKP calls for change – not only in Turkey, but the region as a whole. The preceding Arab regimes could not have carried on. But reform and change depend on each state’s particular circumstances.”

Haşimi is close to intellectuals and political activists in the region and to political parties appreciative of the AKP.

He is a fervent advocate of reform changes and believes the Arab world is Turkey’s purview and vice versa.

“Like you,” he said, “Turkey has had its Arab Spring in 2002,” the year the AKP came to office.

“We believe in reform changes throughout the Islamic world,” he added. “We’ve been waiting for this moment for a hundred years. We’ve been left lagging behind for a full century. And it’s time for geography to reconnect with history.

“We can’t accept an inequitable world order, or to be dictated agendas or courses by the West. We need to set our own.”

Beşir Atalay, also a deputy prime minister, was irked when an Arab researcher talked of a planned Turkish-Israeli-American alliance, given the Israeli prime minister’s ice-breaking phone call to Erdogan, which was brokered by Obama.

“It is sad to hear such a question.” Atalay said. “We can’t build, under Prime Minister Erdogan, an alliance with Israel independently of our Arab and Muslim allies.”

It seems a different and strong Turkey is heading our way, one that has just zeroed out her debt to the International Monetary Fund.

She believes in change in the Arab world, which she divides into two groups – one where she feels accountable for change and another she classifies states according to their respective economic weight and political clout.

Time for a rethink of Saudi foreign policy

“Saudi foreign policy requires large-scale reform. The policy’s premises and political instruments call for renewal as well.”

Dr. Khalid al-Dakheel

In a two-part series published February 3 and February 10 in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, authoritative Saudi analyst and professor of political sociology at King Saud University Khalid al-Dakheel penned a sober, in-depth analysis of the reasons for the required overhaul.

Here is the essence of his argument:

Changed times open the way to changed societies. Nation-states have to adapt and react accordingly.

Likewise at the regional level, where a nation-state is expected to respond and react to changed surroundings, revamping the rationale of its regional and international policies and alliances correspondingly.

Aftereffects of the changes sweeping the Arab World – all the way from the Arab Mashreq to the Arab Maghreb – for the past two years have been monumental. Because their socio-popular causes targeted the ruling establishment and the nature of the State, the Arab World we knew in the 20^th Century is fading away before our eyes.

Problem is, no one knows when or how or where the changes in the regional states’ political cultures, values, interests and alliances would lead.

What is certain is that the Arab World won’t be the same again.

The era of the two Assads’ rule in Syria, for example, is clearly fizzling out.

But what kind of Syria will emerge from the ruins, rivers of blood and social fabric distortions that the two Assads’ rule caused over 40 years?

In Egypt, the First Republic has cracked. But the Second Republic is yet to see the light because of a destructive struggle in free fall. The struggle pits two major components of a shabby political class. The Muslim Brotherhood leads one component while its detractors lead the other.

The same, or almost, can be said in the cases of Yemen, Libya and Tunisia.

Then comes Iraq, where years of suffering culminated in the U.S. invasion.

After the end of the U.S. occupation, came sectarian governance in Iraq under Iran’s thumb.

And now, there is a new uprising in Iraq’s west, seeking a redress.

Where would all this lead? What would happen to political power checks and balances in Jordan and Morocco? How would the situation in Bahrain end?

The questions are endless. But they are legitimate, pressing and on everyone’s mind. They also need to be addressed audaciously, transparently and realistically.

Saudi Arabia falls in the middle of these troubled waters and sits in the eye of their storm.

She is a vast, rich and politically stable country. But she is lashed by wild winds from all sides.

Paradoxically, Saudi Arabia’s influence on the stormy events’ course is far from being commensurate with her breadth, her potentials, her stability and her vast network of regional and international relations.

Her clout in Iraq, for instance, is now little. Saudi Arabia invested massively in this neighboring Arab country since 1973, essentially throughout the era of the late Saddam Hussein.

The investment ended with the disastrous invasion of Kuwait and its aftermath.

Among the consequences was Saudi Arabia exiting, and Iran entering, Iraq from the early days of the U.S. occupation.

Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said as much at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting in New York in September 2005. He told a questioner then that the United States was handing Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter.

This was stated publicly. But did Washington hand Iraq over to Iran on a silver platter by Saudi default? Why did the United States overlook the interests of Saudi Arabia and her Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners as well as Jordan and Egypt when it was occupying Iraq and running its internal affairs?

All the said states were Washington’s allies. So why did the administration of George W. Bush hand over the reins of power in Iraq to Iran’s Iraqi proxies?

How come the U.S. and Iran went fifty-fifty in Iraq since 2003?

What made Washington ignore the scope and depth of social and longstanding relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and their mutual interests, given that the two countries share a 900-kilometer-long common border?

Where Washington was concerned, its alliance with Riyadh in this case counted for little.

Why did this happen and how? Can the outcome be blamed on the conservative nature of Saudi foreign policy and its tendency to react instead of taking the initiative?

Turning to Syria, the payback was not any better.

Saudi Arabia invested much -- politically and financially -- in the Assad regimes for decades. It is fair to say the investment in Hafez paid off to a degree.

The investment secured a modicum of stability in intra-Arab and Arab-Iranian relations, in forging a Saudi-Syrian-Egyptian axis that played a key role in the October War and in realigning Arab positions generally.

But the axis failed to lay the foundations for equitable and solid Saudi-Syrian bilateral relations. Proof is that it failed to prevent Syria falling gradually into Iran’s lap. Under Bashar, a solid Damascus-Tehran alliance was cemented.

Saudi-Syrian relations started going downhill and reached breaking point after Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination in 2005. All accusing fingers pointed at the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia tried to overcome this in the three years leading to the May 2008 Doha Agreement, which gave Hezbollah – Iran and the Syrian regime’s cat’s paw in Lebanon – a one-third blocking majority in a planned government.

Hezbollah has since become the kingmaker in Lebanese politics. Armed to the teeth by Iranian weapons it receives via Syria, the party now decides the head, lineup and manifesto of every new Lebanese government.

Awkwardly, the Saudi-sponsored 1989 Taef Agreement provided for the disarmament of all national and non-national militias. All have disarmed apart from Hezbollah.

In other words, as part of her investment in the Syrian regime, Saudi Arabia provided Arab cover for the flow of Iranian arms to Hezbollah via Syria.

This does not mean Saudi Arabia approved all that was happening. But all this happened nevertheless.

Ultimately, Saudi-Syrian relations collapsed with the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution in March 2011, after which Assad described Saudi and Gulf Arab leaders as heads of Bedouin states that have “no tradition, no history.”

Doesn’t this warrant root changes in Saudi foreign policy and its cornerstones?

Over and above the foreign policy debacles of the highest order in Iraq and Syria, you can hardly point at any Saudi foreign policy success or breakthrough elsewhere since 1990 – one that would match the investment put in it.  

Of late, however, Saudi foreign policy succeeded partially in two instances.

Before the Arab Spring, it did well in cooperating with the Sana’a government to keep the political situation in Yemen under control.

After the Arab Spring, it succeeded through the “Gulf Initiative” in having Ali Abdullah Saleh transfer power to Vice-President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to lead the transition and spare Yemen a slide into civil war.

But the success is still unfulfilled. Southern separatism has reignited, the country remains in political transition under UN supervision, and Saleh is still lying in wait.

So why is Saudi foreign policy’s track record a blend of unfulfilled successes and utter disappointments?

To be fair, Saudi Arabia is not to blame for the Yemen initiative staying unfulfilled. The blame falls on the complexities of Yemeni politics and the meddling by Iran, which is bent on smuggling arms into the country to destabilize it and gain a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula’s south.

In March 2011, Saudi Arabia and her GCC partners decided to deploy Peninsula Shield forces in Bahrain to protect vital installations after the escalation of clashes there between security forces and protesters.

It was the right decision to make in terms of objective and timing, except that the decision lacked a political initiative to heal sectarian and political divisions that gripped Bahrain in the wake of the Arab Spring.

Again, Iran has been exploiting the Bahrain crisis to gain a foothold at Saudi Arabia’s doorstep.

In other words, Saudi Arabia and her GCC partners succeeded in helping Bahrain cope with the situation, but failed to bring it to a close.

It seems the anchors of Saudi foreign policy no longer suit this period.

The anchors were based on making the most of the balances of powers and interests in the region without direct involvement.

The geographic, economic, demographic and Islamic credentials of Saudi Arabia allowed her to carve herself a strategic position in a strategic part of the world. Until recently, she was one of the four legs of the Arab regional order table.

The irony is that Saudi Arabia had no military muscle to match either her geographic and economic weight or her political and regional role.

Today, she can no more be the region’s powerbroker, especially in the Arab Gulf.

Iraq and Iran were at one point the Gulf’s powerbrokers. Since the occupation of Iraq, Iran shares the role with the United States while seeking to become the region’s hegemon.

With foreign policies requiring teeth and power sources, Saudi Arabia is still relying on (1) diplomacy and financial giveaways and (2) regional and international power balances. She has control over the first two elements and controls nothing of the rest. The result is what we saw and are seeing in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Clearly, the policy of relying on the balances of power game without military muscle requires revision.