Celebrations in Aleppo over a dictator’s departure - Photo by Rob Vreeken.It takes a long time to get rid of dictators. In Syria, it finally happened – the end of authoritarian rule after a popular uprising fuelled by 13 years of oppression. We saw similar patterns elsewhere in the Arab world earlier, and in some Southasian countries. What lessons can be learned?
From Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to Syria: Dictators Never Prosper
By Rob Vreeken
Istanbul, Turkey
It’s taking a while for the old Syria to make way for the new Syria. On a government building in the center of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, there is still a huge photo on a wall of Bashir al-Assad, the ousted dictator. His smiling head is about 10 meters above street level, apparently too high for someone to tear it off.
That is what happened to almost all of his portraits all over Syria, they were pulled off the wall. Often there was another photo of the ousted president underneath and sometimes another one.
‘Previously, no one dared to remove a portrait of Assad’, says Ahmad, a 30-year-old resident of the city. ‘Not even the person who had to hang up the new photo. You could easily be arrested.’
It is a stark reminder of the fear that authoritarian leaders tend to use to rule, and perhaps also of the arrogance and corruption that in the end contribute to their downfall. We have seen this happen elsewhere in the Arab world as well as in several South Asian countries.
Fourteen years after the start of the Arab Spring, Syria is the last Arab country where a popular uprising led to a dictator’s departure. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Algeria and Sudan preceded it.
In recent years, popular movements in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have also brought down authoritarian regimes. Tunisia, the first Arab country where the population took to the streets. That was December 2010. The nation was long considered the only success story of the Arab Spring, with an exemplary, secular constitution put in place. Democracy took root, mainly thanks to a strong civil society.
The trade union federation UGTT, the employers’ organization Utica, the Bar Association, the human rights league LTDH (together ‘the Quartet’), women’s groups and NGOs mobilized their supporters whenever the democratic transition threatened to fail. The army stayed out of politics. The Quartet was deservedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.
Eventually, the transition went off the rails. President Kais Saied, elected in 2019, became increasingly authoritarian and dissolved parliament. Dissidents are again disappearing behind bars.
How could this happen, and how could the Quartet let this happen? That question has not yet been satisfactorily answered.
Civil society in Egypt proved too weak to counterbalance the reactionary giants: The business elite, the Muslim Brotherhood and – above all – the army. In the left-liberal camp, political illiteracy and egotism were rampant. The field was thus open to the ‘Islamists’. However, they were so blinded by the power that had fallen on them, that the army could easily push them aside. The Egyptian revolution succumbed to the burden of the past. The ancien régime had too much to lose in allowing the status quo to change.
In Libya, the dictator Moammar Gaddafi left behind a nation without a state. He decided everything, brandishing his ridiculous Green Book (favorite phrase: ‘Women, like men, are human beings. This is an incontestable truth’). What government existed, apart from the oil sector, was too weak to function without direction from Brother Leader. His army crumbled after the rebels’ overcame it, with NATO support.
Libya had to start from scratch. That virginity might have yielded some good if the West had not soon abandoned the country to its fate again. Now hostile militias determined the course of post-revolutionary Libya.
The ethnic strife in poverty-struck Yemen – already not a good breeding ground for democracy – was further fueled by the military involvement of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran and the US. In Algeria and Sudan, the generals ultimately proved unwilling to give in to the call for change in 2019. Both countries followed Egypt’s example.
Pathfinders
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are similar to Tunisia in that both countries have a strong civil society. As in Tunisia, this is partly the product of decades of investment in education; in Bangladesh since the 1990s, in Sri Lanka and Tunisia since the 1950s.
As in Tunisia, the army in Sri Lanka has largely stayed out of politics. In Bangladesh the track record is a bit different, with a history of military rule since the eighties. However, during last year’s July Revolution, the army did not intervene to uphold Sheikh Hasina’s government.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka differ from the Arab countries in that both have more experience in the democratic process. This allowed Sri Lanka to have a relatively smooth constitutional landing after the Rajapaksa brothers were made to leave in July 2022. In Bangladesh, the interim government of the veteran nonprofit leader Mohammad Yunus appears to follow the same electoral path.
So how, all in all, does Syria fit into this list?
First, it is clear that there are no armed forces that can take power. The Syrian army, demoralized and underpaid, dissolved into nothing. There is also no strong civil society. Dictator Bashar al-Assad simply did not allow that. Syrians in the diaspora have organized themselves, but they cannot easily transfer their activities to the homeland, if only because many cannot yet return to the devastated villages and urban districts. Moreover, it is questionable how much space the rebel government will give them.
A real risk is that of militias fighting each other, as in Libya. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appears to have the major cities under control, but in several provinces Arab militias operate whose obedience to the new rulers has yet to be tested. Not to mention the Kurdish ‘Autonomous Region’ in the northeast – the biggest political challenge to the HTS regime.
A big question mark is the role of Islam. The HTS, a split from Al Qaeda, presents itself as moderate, but its self-proclaimed ideal is still an ‘Islamic state’. In the Arab countries mentioned, political Islam did not gain a foothold, except perhaps in Libya, but in Syria things could turn out differently.
The question of the relationship between political Islam and democracy is then very much on the table. Ahmad al-Sharaa, the HTS leader, has already said it will take at least four years to prepare for elections. That does not really sound like Mohammad Yunus’ path to restoration of democracy.
Finally, the outside world. In Syria much more than in other countries, external players will have a big influence on the transition: Turkey first of all, the US, Europe, the Gulf States, Israel, Iran, the UN. That also makes the future unpredictable. Syria is so much in ruins that billions are needed for reconstruction. The donors are likely to make their help conditional, in the best case on the establishment of the rule of law, women’s rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities.
A possible positive factor is Turkey. Just like the Gulf States, Ankara does not want a radical Islamic neighbor. It can try to export its democratic model to Syria. This may sound strange to those who consider President Erdogan a semi-dictator, but Turkey does have a powerful opposition, which last year won a resounding victory in local elections.
If such a system is put in place, Syria may well emerge as being better off than any former Arab Spring country.
(Rob Vreeken is an award-winning journalist from the Netherlands based in Istanbul as a correspondent for the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, where he previously served as Foreign Editor. He has covered South Asia extensively, as well as the popular uprisings in 2011 in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and their aftermaths. He was recently in Syria and filed this report for Sapan
