A Resilient Spirit Yearning for Justice: The Arab World Today

Nizar Qabbani is widely considered to be not only Syria’s National Poet, but one of the most beloved in the Arab World. For a region and a people that have gained a reputation for religious conservatism among most of the world, Qabbani’s poetry is known and celebrated for its eroticism. In the 1950s and 1960s, during the heydays of pan-Arabism when the Arab World possessed a certain revolutionary élan and optimism, Qabbani composed poetry celebrating romance, with graphic descriptions of female anatomy and passionate love-making.

His poetry however sharply veered to the political after the Arab defeat against Israel in 1967. As if suddenly made clairvoyant of the problems that plagued the Arab World, he started writing poetry savaging Arab dictators for their tyranny, Arab society for its religious intolerance, and Arab men for their misogyny (his inspiration to write romantic poetry stemmed from his sister’s suicide, which she did in order to escape an arranged marriage). In 1995, his bitterness over the state of the Arab World having reached a boiling point, Qabbani wrote  “When Will They Announce The Death of the Arabs?”. As apparent from its title, the poem was a stinging attack on the state Arabs are in, fulminating against the usual suspects of dictatorship, misogyny, and political lethargy. It struck quite a chord, prompting much debate in Arab newspapers.

In the 17^th stanza, Qabbani laments:

Oh my Homeland [The Arab World], they have turned you into a TV horror series we watch in the evening.

What would happen to you if the electricity was cut off?

Despite the year being 2024, those lines in particular evoke the state all Arabs around me are in. From Morocco to Oman we’re all glued to the TV with Al-Jazeera on, helplessly watching in horror as what we consider to be a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza unfold, unable to alter the reality as the death toll (widely estimated to be at least 37,000) rises by the day, and video after video emerge of blood-curdling atrocities by the IDF. Seeing corpses of Palestinian children on TV has practically become our daily life. 

A survey conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies has found a staggering 97% of respondents reporting that they currently feel “psychological stress” due to the war, with 84% asserting they experience this to a great degree, and 80% saying they follow news of the war every single day.

With such unanimous feelings of outrage, one might wonder why precisely are the Arabs so helpless in the current moment? Why is it that no Arab country has taken any actions to alter the reality in Gaza, whether militarily, diplomatically, or anything along the lines of the famous 1973 decision by oil-producing Arab countries to stop exporting oil to countries supporting Israel during the Fourth Arab–Israeli War? 

False Spring

The answer lies in another time when all Arabs were all glued to our televisions and Al-Jazeera. At first it was not in horror, but in a sense of utter disbelief and joy. After the self-immolation of a Tunisian street-vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in response to repeated humiliations inflicted on him by the police and municipal officials, Tunisians took to the streets protesting dictatorship, corruption, political repression, and lack of freedoms. The 28-day campaign of civil disobedience forced the long-time Tunisian dictator Ben Ali to step down. Then, the unthinkable happened. 

Egyptians, taking a cue from Tunisians, also took to the streets in millions, starting on 25 January, 2011. To alter Metternich’s famous saying: “When Cairo sneezes, the Arab World gets a cold”. The traditional hegemon of the Arab World, with its famously massive state and centralized power, was no match for Tahrir Square. The Revolution was no longer an incident restricted to the locals of Tunisia , but an avowedly pan-Arab event. It was dubbed by western commentators as “The Arab Spring” after the European 1848 “Spring of Nations” Revolutions (an odd if prophetic choice, given that the 1848 uprisings were a failure, dubbed by the British historian G. M. Trevelyan as “the turning point at which modern history failed to turn”). Revolutions erupted in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and practically every other Arab country. The Arab Spring captured global imagination. American “Occupy Wall Street” protestors were directly taking cues from it. It was a remarkable thing that couldn’t help but fill an Arab with pride. The Arab World wasn’t taking lessons on democracy from The West, but the reverse. 

While the anti-Ghaddafi protests in Libya morphed into a bloody civil war due to Ghaddafi’s brutality, the Arabs felt that the writing was on the wall. The defeat of the dictators was inevitable. The mood was filled with stubborn triumphalism. Rather than expressions of doom and gloom, Facebook was flooded with memes mocking Ghaddafi’s erratic mannerisms. 

Things, however, started to go wrong with Syria. Assad was completely unfazed, but planned to dig his heels in and crush the uprising by any means necessary. The crackdown on the peaceful protestors was brutal beyond words and imagination. Hundreds of men, women, and children were not only shot down in cold blood, but went through an industrial torture system practically unparalleled in history. If we were glued to Al-Jazeera watching ecstatic crowds in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution, the crowds were replaced by corpses, torture victims, and bloodied children struggling to breathe after being gassed by Assad’s chemical weapons when it came to Syria. 

The “Free Syrian Army” was formed to fight back against Assad, but was pushed back by Russia’s intervention, brutal bombing, and Iranian-backed militias. Assad deliberately released fundamentalist Sunni Islamists from prison in order to taint the Uprising and project a sectarian character unto it. The formation of ISIS and its horrific reign of terror was proof Assad could point his finger towards to prove his point, despite him deliberately strategically pulling his forces back from certain areas so ISIS could take over. 

Revenge of the Petro-Bastille

The Arab Spring quickly turned into winter. Civil Wars raged across Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Saudi Arabian troops intervened in Bahrain and crushed the Uprising. More than half a million Syrians are dead, with more than 6 million being displaced as global refugees across the world. Political infighting in Egypt gave way to a coup d’état by General Abdelfatah Al-Sisi. Sisi proceeded to brutally crack down on any gains made during the Revolution, not even shying away from massacring up to 1,000 people in one day. The country that was once a model for revolutions has morphed into a brutal kleptocratic military dictatorship which presides over a crumbling economy. The hegemon of the Arab World was a hegemon no more. Egypt turned into a sorry and decrepit image of its former self, barely able to keep its currency afloat, kept on life-support by money from the Gulf States, who now fill the vacuum of hegemony in the Arab World. 

If there are any parallels between the Arab Revolutions and the French Revolution, it’s that absolute monarchy was and is a villain. The Gulf monarchies were against the Uprisings from day 1, plotting against it from the beginning. Saudi and Emirati monarchs urged America not to pressure Mubarak into resignation (going as far as to threaten Obama), and once that failed, proceeded to destabilize Egypt’s new democracy by funding counter-revolutionary political groups and later Sisi himself. In Libya, they funded, and continue to fund, wannabe strong-man General Haftar. In 2024, the UAE funds and equips the notorious Sudanese Rapid Support Forces, despite their guilt of Crimes Against Humanity and genocide during the war in Darfur. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler, Muhammed Bin Salman (known as MBS), assassinates critical journalists with impunity. Behind all the glitter and glamour of Gulf skyscrapers, behind their aspirations to become sophisticated tech hubs, lies brutal slave states led by absolute monarchs who loathe democracy more than anything else and seek to crush it wherever it can at any costs. 

The nefarious influence of Gulf States extends far beyond the borders of the Arab World. The reach of their long arm extends from lobbying against climate efforts in order to keep oil sales high to bribing EU politicians. Despite the numerous human rights violations and their crusade against democracy, American presidential administrations do not seem to be particularly disturbed, but stubbornly insist on empowering the Gulf States. The Trump Administration bonded with the Emirati monarch over their hatred of “The Persians”. The fact that the UAE funds the Rapid Support Forces has not earned it a reprimand from the Biden Administration, neither for its immortality, nor for the fact that this puts them on the same side as Russian Wagner mercenaries. The Biden administration has also sought to hammer out an agreement by which the United States would defend the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia militarily in exchange for normalization with Israel. One can only imagine the horror of the Founding Fathers at the prospect of the American army being put at the disposal of defending an absolute monarchy. 

United in Misery 

For decades support for the Palestinian cause has been practically the only thing Arabs can agree on. It has served as a rallying cry for numerous Arab political figures, ranging from idealistic communists and liberals to dictators seeking to improve their reputations. And yet Arab dictators, whom the Arab Spring failed to dislodge, are both so cynical and terrified of any sort of popular mobilization that they have opted not to lift a finger despite the horror their citizens feel towards what is happening in Gaza. On the 23^rd of April, a dozen or less Egyptian feminists gathered in front of the UN Women office simply to read a statement in standard Arabic expressing solidarity with Gazan and Sudanese women – only to find themselves swiftly arrested. 

Today, the Arab World finds itself drowning in misery, bitterness, tyranny, and further from democracy than ever in its history. Dictatorship and war has engulfed the region, with no end in sight. According to the world bank, the Middle East is the only region in the world where poverty increased in 2023. Young men are frustrated, finding nothing else to do than give in to their hopeless fates or make a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in spite of being likely to drown on the way there. Even Tunisia, once hailed as the Arab Spring’s only success story, is now watching as its young democracy is dismantled by president Qais Said. Not a single Arab state is free from being ruled by a repressive state, save for Lebanon with its peculiar sectarian arrangement and notoriously weak state. 

As Arabs witness ongoing tragedies like civil wars, dictatorship, and the horrors perpetuated by Israel in Gaza, their collective sense of feeling helpless is overwhelming. One hopes the ideals of justice and liberty may once again triumph in the region, hopefully ushering in a world where we are not glued to our TVs everyday, helplessly watching atrocities be perpetuated against our people. Until then, writings like the poetry of Qabbani may remind us that amidst all the despair in the Arab World, there lies a resilient spirit yearning for justice, freedom, and a brighter tomorrow. 

Featured Image is Praying time at Al Tahrir square, by Zeinab Mohamed