And the ‘Spring’ Turns Sour

What’s left of the so-called “Arab spring,” on which the West pinned so much hope and whose media put on a pedestal? The gruesome statistics of women, children and men killed in conflicts that they don’t understand illustrates an unspeakable Arab tragedy. In fact, four years after open war began in the Arab countries, the reason for these conflicts is still not understood. Could it have been otherwise if we cited the fact that these events were managed by powers that did not only want the best for the Arab people in Tunisia, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Yemen?

The so-called “Arab spring” was hailed in the West and by certain Arab parties as being a symbol of the “deliverance” of the Arab people. Deliverance indeed! In fact, at the time — between January and April 2011 — a number of media outlets, principally French ones, claimed profusely to “not understand the failure” of Algeria’s “spring.” Refer to the writings of this period, especially the analyses and examinations of Algeria “missing” the train of “change.” In hindsight, reading these surrealist texts is very instructive.

Yet, the so-called “Arab spring” — which is largely responsible for the breakdown and destruction of certain Arab countries, namely Libya and Syria — set in motion a vast reconfiguration plan in the Arab and Muslim world. Mostly unexpected, at least in terms of the context in which it started (the brutal revolt of Tunisians against dictator Ben Ali), the “Arab spring” was nonetheless the situation that those who wanted to restructure the Arab world wanted. Wherever this “spring” failed or was not on the agenda, it was kindled, thereby ensuring the initiation of the reorganization of the Arab world.

This was especially the case in Libya and Syria, where a “spring” was considered ripe for the picking. The lives of millions of Libyans (the NATO airstrikes against Tripoli and Benghazi) and Syrians (the atrocities committed by rebel and jihadi groups) had no value when faced with the enormous challenges of controlling a strategic region. A look at a geopolitical map of the Arab world helps you contextualize these challenges: Intersecting the East and West, 60 percent of the world’s fossil energy — oil, conventional gas, shale gas — is found in the Maghreb (Algeria and Libya) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Iran, Syria, etc.). In Iraq, the first men who landed in the shadow of the marines in 2003 were Texan oilmen.

It’s all just a symbol. If the Americans in particular do not act openly, as they did in Iraq, they are nonetheless the managers of this renovation of the Arab world, interposed by jihadi groups. In fact, the scenario is fully developed: The jihadis commit and publicize atrocities (the killing of a Jordanian pilot was especially abhorrent), while the West calls them out as crimes against humanity; it’s part of its role, all while trying to blame the Syrian regime for these horrible crimes. Of course, we “savages” don’t figure into the plans made by Western “civilization,” which calls itself democratic and “humanist.” The people of Vietnam, Africa and the Middle East can attest to that.

No! We will not change the subject, we’re staying put: The thousands of “jihadis” that are spreading in Iraq, Syria and Libya were trained by the CIA and financed by Saudi Arabia. Riyadh works tirelessly to expand Wahhabism (and its evil twin, Salafism) throughout the world — not exclusively in the Arab region, although that is its first priority — which is boosted by petrodollars. Afghanistan in the 2000s (with the Mujahidin and the Taliban), Egypt and Algeria (in the 1990s) — having experienced these savage hordes who invaded their territory, burning and killing everything that moved — know something about it.

Also, did the bloody and frightening upheaval of the so-called “revolutions” in Syria, Iraq and Libya surprise the strategists and analysts, who now spread explanations — useless as well as vain — of what, according to them, the advent of “democracy” in the Arab world should have looked like? A “democracy” that celebrates those who have made it their mission to reform the Arab world, but actually disguises its motivations, which have nothing to do with the free will of the Arab people. The tragedies that the Libyan and Syrian people are living through incriminate every day those who decided to “civilize” them. From the perspective of Washington, Paris and London, Damascus and Tripoli were far away, and the backlash was not expected.