This week several major media outlets (NPR, BBC, CSM, Al Jazeera) are offering retrospectives of various kinds of the wave of protests that began roughly a year ago in the Middle East and North Africa. Coined as the ‘Arab Spring’ these protests were initially hailed as a wave of nonviolent social change, and proof that democracy and peaceful protest could take root in historically authoritarian regimes, challenging the more conflict based approaches of groups such as Hamas.
However, a year later, the initial wave of optimism seems to have crashed upon the harsh realities of transforming societies ill-prepared for democracy and the unexpected resistance several of the movements have faced from entrenched elites. A cursory check of the headlines gives us the following examples:
Increasing disillusion with the prospects for real change in Libya.
Given the trajectories of these protest movements can we still call them a victory for nonviolent protest, or do we need to reassess the way the Arab Spring has played out and the limits of nonviolence against determined militaristic regimes, and what citizens do in response to harsher crackdowns?