The Final Installment of Research Fellow Emily Hawley's Three Part Retrospective on the Arab Spring: Arab Uprisings Stalled: Syria and the Monarchies

Did the Arab Spring Fail?

While naysayers of the Arab Spring point to disappointing outcomes in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, most Arab nations never reached the point of testing their protesters' demands. Whether demonstrators called for regime change or merely democratic reforms, in the majority of cases reforms were insubstantial and regimes stayed put. One form of government showed particular resilience in facing protesters: the monarchy. In the Arab world's eight monarchies—Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE—royalty maintained its grip on power. The Arab world's republican systems fared less well; of the four leaders replaced in the Arab uprisings, all were presidents.

Not all Arab republics fell. But of the presidents who endured, only one faced large-scale opposition; Syria's Bashar al-Assad has clung to power by force. Assad's position was always different from that of Mubarak or Gaddafi, and, in many ways, Syria's struggle most closely parallels that of the monarchy Bahrain. These two nations and their bloody struggles reveal the fierce sectarianism inflaming parts of West Asia-North Africa. But the failed uprisings in Syria, Bahrain and the other Arab monarchies need not prove skeptics' claims that the Arab world is incompatible with democracy; other factors meant real reforms never got a chance. Many of these nations were able to quell movements with financial incentives. Some monarchs successfully co-opted reform movements, placing the weight of reform upon national dialogues of ranging authenticity. Others used force. Bahrain stood out amongst the monarchies for its brutal response, but its violence cannot compare to the ongoing fully-fledged war in Syria.

Syria and Bahrain: Power by Force

Much of the chaos unfolding in Syria is related to the religion and politics of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. The Assad family is Alawite, a small religious sect considered to be Shia Muslim by some religious leaders, and President Assad represents the secular-nationalist Ba'ath political party. These two characteristics drew support from Syria's varied religious minorities, but were  problematic for Syria's underrepresented Sunni majority. Syria's Islamists took issue with the government's fiercely secular stance. In mid-March 2011, protests ignited in the city of Daraa after the arrest and torture of a group of school children for anti-regime graffiti.  When families' attempts to address the issue through legal means failed, they took to the streets, joined by thousands of supporters.

The government made shallow attempts to meet the people's demands, but the response emphasized stick over carrot. One major concession, the end of decades of emergency law, meant little when security forces remained above the law.  Troops besieged cities, used live-fire on unarmed protesters, and prevented families from gaining access to those killed in the clashes. The government justified its vehement response by blaming protests on alleged inciters who ranged from religious extremists, gangs and the United States-Israel alliance to Palestinians, Saudi Arabia and the Assad's Lebanese opponents.   Meanwhile, the Syrian regime targeted its more moderate Islamist and secular opposition, leaving the most extreme and violent opposition to fill their vacuum.

Partly due to Assad's strategic targeting, since late 2012, two militant Islamist groups have come to the fore in Syria: al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and Daesh, the so-called Islamic State. Daesh’s shocking and merciless rise in Syria and Iraq has transformed international perceptions of the conflict. To many external powers, Assad is now the ‘lesser of two evils,’ and Syrian policy must be oriented in terms of destroying and degrading this new threat. In practice, this strategy has led to the international coalition against Daesh inadvertently aiding the Assad regime by targeting one of Assad’s opponents for him, permitting Syria's military to further focus on the remaining moderate movements.

A more critical contribution to Assad's continued grip on power is the backing of Iran and the Lebanese organisation Hezbollah. The interference of these two Shia powers has further provoked regional Sunni-Shia tensions. Even if many doubt the Alawites' legitimacy as Shia Muslims, the two Shia powers find the Assad Ba'athists vastly preferable to a new Sunni rival. This combination of external influence and sectarian-tension influence was mirrored in Bahrain's uprising. But in Bahrain, Sunnis and Shias were on opposite sides of the picket line; the Sunni al Khalifa family reigns over a Shia majority.

Bahrain's Arab Spring ignited mid-February 2011 following decades of protests for political reform and greater human rights. Although protesters kept their demands religion-neutral, Shias generally led the demonstrations. Their calls for equal representation worried not only Bahrain's royals but also Bahrain's neighbours. The Sunni Gulf nations are wary of Iran's encroaching Shia influence. So while Bahrain's protesters practiced the non-violence that characterised movements throughout the Arab Spring, government forces did not. 
As in Syria, external powers interfered on the behalf of the regime. Saudi Arabia and the UAE sent some 1500 troops to back-up Bahraini troops as they quashed protesters in March 2011.  The core opposition continues to lead regular anti-government protests and boycotted Bahrain's November 2014 elections. The monarchy's lame attempts to reform culminated in a repeatedly stalled National Dialogue, and any notion of reconciliation seems to have faded amongst the surging regional tensions.  Meanwhile, as the government increasingly silences political dissent, often through administrative detention, the opposition’s use of violence has escalated. 

The Monarchies' Resilience

Bahrain's fellow monarchies managed to withstand the Arab Spring with less bloodshed. All eight kingdoms stand today. What helped the Arab monarchies stand strong?  One factor is hydrocarbon wealth--oil--that permits some Arab monarchies to operate as rentier systems, using a lucrative natural resource for funds rather than tax revenues. When there is no taxation, citizens have little leverage to call for representation. Since 2011, the Gulf kingdoms have flooded billions into development projects and job creation. 
Of course, not all Arab monarchies have the capacity to be rentier systems; Jordan and Morocco cannot count on paying off their populaces. But wealthy Gulf monarchies have great incentive to maintain the stability of monarchical structures around them. The wealthier monarchies spent billions in helping their less wealthy counterparts maintain stability and balance budget deficits. 

Morocco and Jordan also shared a unique form of leverage: they could actually implement reforms. The Gulf monarchies are largely dynastic; when the entire government is dominated by the royal family, it is extremely difficult to make substantive changes. But Morocco and Jordan have individual kings with separate government structures. This permitted Muhammad VI of Morocco and Abdullah II of Jordan to take steps towards greater parliamentary power and democratic reforms.  It also gave these figures leeway to co-opt reforms, deflecting criticisms upon elected officials and those in charge of the reform process. 

The Future for Reform and Revolution in Syria and the Monarchies

In Bahrain and Syria, those seeking revolution have done so at great cost. Bahrain's situation is less violent than Syria's but remains potentially explosive. In contrast to Bahrain's small flares of ongoing violence, Syria's bloody war has killed some 220,000 people and uprooted over 11.5 million others, and the violence gives little sign of slowing.   In the monarchies, while sentiments that fueled heart-felt protests simmer, ongoing destruction from Syria’s uprising gone awry has tempered neighbouring ambitions. The protest movements in each of these countries faced two major barriers: the dual subduing influences of regional powers and oil money. More importantly, since the spree of revolutions in 2011, a new wave of increased sectarian conflict has spread across the region; in the immediate future, contagious sectarian conflict remains more foreseeable than a renewed call for democratic reforms in West Asia-North Africa.