Al Jazeera Discovers Arab Spring, Forgets Who Watered the Desert
The article suggests the Arab Spring hasn't ended, only matured into a deeper repression—a statement few could dispute. But missing from this narrative is the geopolitical gardening that helped those 'regimes' flourish after 2011. The US and its allies, champions often (selectively) of democracy, suddenly found the stability of dictatorships rather appealing when the alternative involved genuine
popular self-determination. Think of Egypt's military coup in 2013, which was met with a lukewarm response, then normalized with billions in continued US aid – $1.3 billion annually to the military, to be precise, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. So, while Al Jazeera correctly observes the 'criminalized dissent,' one might also ponder who supplied the tools and training to
criminalize it so effectively. It's almost as if the 'free world' prefers its democratic aspirations only when they align with oil prices and regional hegemony. The Arab Spring's dreams didn't just die; they were actively smothered, often by the same hands now expressing concern.