Effect of the 2011 Arab Spring on Democracy & Terrorism

Introduction
In the year 2011, the world was shocked by events that sparked a series of major uprisings throughout the Middle East, a region known for its instability, fiercely dictatorial governments, exotic imagery, violence, and oil.  The 2011 Arab spring was a start from a series of protests in countries of repressive and autocratic form of governments, which have been affected with great unemployment, rising living costs, low education and low human rights. The 2011 Arab Springs had extensive implications in the Middle East where countries went into a process of change. From peaceful protests, into violence and armed insurgency and full scale civil war and eventually the breakdown of civil society giving the rise of terrorist elements of the armed insurgency, who actively opposed the governments and who were prepared to use violence i.e. terrorist means. The countries which will discussed, in the context of the 2011 Arab spring, will include the following: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Some of the key features will include evidence of the process of democracy. Institutions established to bring about change. Evidence of change from protest and concessions made to the people. However there are also other arguments to consider relating to the 2011 Arab springs which include the foreign intervention during the 2011 Arab spring, the rise and support of terrorist activities in the 2011 Arab spring.
The 2011 Arab Spring began in Tunisia, also known as the Jasmine Revolution there was major civil unrest across the country with street by street battles and mass demonstrations taking place in Tunisia, ‘On January 14 a state of emergency was declared, and Tunisian state media reported that the government had been dissolved and that legislative elections would be held in the next six months. That announcement also failed to quell unrest, and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stepped down as president’, leaving the country in January 2011. Turkey thereafter had free and democratic elections. They saw the victory of a coalition of the Islamist Ennahda Party with this was one example of a country where free and democratic elections meant a government elected from its people. Also all political prisoners were released and the ban on political parties lifted. 
In Tunisia even though its revolution was
considered a success it is notable that the country has the most fighters of
Isil and other various ‘rebel groups in Syria and Iraq taking part in terrorism
to uproot the government of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya’ (THE SOUFAN GROUP, 2017).
In Syria protests calling for the resignation of President. Bashar al-Assad broke out in southern Syria in mid-March 2011 and spread through the country. The Assad regime responded with a brutal crackdown against protesters, drawing condemnation from international leaders and human rights groups. A leadership council for the Syrian opposition formed in Istanbul in August called the Free Syrian Army. However in Syria  the little hope for democracy and concessions made my President Basher Al-Assad has turned into a full scale Civil war leading to the deaths of more than half a million people in Syria with numerous proxy wars and more recently have led to the rise of the Salifi movement ISIS. At the beginning of 2012 two prominent Salafi armed groups emerged: ‘Jabhat al-Nusra and Kata’ib Ahrar al-Sham (the Freemen of Syria Battalions) both of which embraced the language of jihad and called for an Islamic state based on Salafi principles’ (International Crisis Group, 2012).

Libya
In
Libya from 1 September 1969 the ‘Libyan Revolutionary Command Council (RCC)
headed by Gaddafi abolished the monarchy and the old constitution and
proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic, with the motto: freedom, socialism,
and unity’ (Michigan State University, 1994 – 2016). The Leader Muammar Gaddafi
would rule Libya for 42 years. Under Gaddafi, law number seventy-one of 1972
banned all political parties and opposition groups. Dissent was punishable by
death, and in fact political opponents were assassinated both domestically and
abroad.
Libya
had the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality and the
highest life expectancy in all of Africa. Even though, Libya was considered as
a “brutal dictatorship” by the west, it is clear that Libya was a prosperous
nation with free education and health care and laws that protect discrimination
and violence against woman as defined in the sources by the (Us Department of
State, 2017). Before the 2011 Arab spring al Qaeda and militant terrorism did
not exist in the country. Libya was a peaceful nation which did not threat to
use Weapons of Mass destruction nor other means to destabilise Europe by
terrorist means.
The
events in Libya turned from protests into a full scale civil war between the
National Transition council and loyal forces of the Libyan armed forces.
The Foreign intervention in the 2011 Arab Spring
Foreign intervention in the
2011 Arab spring was a pivotal moment during the Libyan Civil war. The United
Nation Security Council on the 11th March 2011 passed on a
resolution to implement a no fly zone. The resolution implemented by NATO was
to prevent the harming of civilians in Libya and to implement and democratic
resolution in Libya (United Nations Security council, 2011). However during the
Libyan Civil war there wasn’t any consideration of whom NATO was going to help
militarily.  The parliamentary Foreign
affairs committee stated in the recent report that ‘the possibility that
militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from. The rebellion should
not have been the preserve of hindsight. Libyan connections with transnational
militant extremist groups were known before 2011, because many Libyans had
participated in the Iraq insurgency and in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda’. (The
Foreign Affairs Committee, 2016).
Movement towards Democracy

In Many opposition participants called for a return to the constitution and a transition to multi-party democracy most notably in Tunisia and Libya however with the use of violent means which the effect could count as the use of terrorism to the government in charge. As violence increased security forced ordered to shoot with impunity defected. The Arab uprisings were less a cry for democracy than a demand for better governance and improved economic performance. Few citizens across the region directly attributed to democracy itself the changes, good or bad, that the uprisings brought. By this measure at least, the uprisings and the events that followed did little to dampen the overall demand for democracy in the region as a whole. Citizens have continued to believe, as they did before the protests, that democracy is the best form of government and that the regimes in their countries have a long way to go to become fully democratic. Tunisia, the place where the Arab uprisings began and the site of the greatest progress toward democracy since then, represents an exception to this broader trend in public opinion. Since the Jasmine Revolution of 2011, Tunisians have grown increasingly concerned about the effects of democracy and have become less likely to say that this system is suitable for their country. Despite these trends, however, the vast majority of Tunisians continue to say that democracy, whatever its problems, is the best system of government for their country. As the Tunisian case suggests, Arab publics are responding mainly to developments at home rather than to wider regional factors. Thus Egyptians, unlike Tunisians, have been disinclined to hold democracy responsible for their country’s rocky political course, and instead have blamed the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam. This decision about where to place blame in turn reflects factors specific to the political situation as it has unfolded in Egypt since dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign in February 2011.
In Tunisia, there is clear
promise in the areas of freedom of association and freedom of expression, and
media freedom in particular. A fairly open field for the exercise of these
rights has emerged, in stark contrast to the deeply repressive environment for
news media and civic groups under the Ben Ali regime. Civil society and trade
unions since January 14, 2011, have operated with a degree of openness and
independence that was unimaginable before that date. In addition, spirited
political jockeying took place ahead of October’s constituent assembly
elections and the elections themselves proved to be open, competitive, and
pluralistic. But these gains do not mean that Tunisia has already cemented
institutional reforms in the media, civil society, or electoral politics.
Instead, they represent a promising early advance toward a culture of
transparency and pluralism that must be safeguarded with concrete legal and
regulatory changes. If citizens, political leaders, and other influential
figures make the right choices, they can fortify Tunisia’s nascent democracy
against the challenges it will inevitably face.
In Egypt, the months since
Mubarak’s ouster have revealed a much darker outlook for reform. As of the end
of October, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had resorted to familiar
methods of repression, including severe curbs on the activities of civil
society and independent media, and foment of sectarian tensions for political
gain. The SCAF’s extension and expansion in September 2011 of the country’s
oppressive emergency law, a hallmark of the Mubarak era, sent a chilling signal
to those working toward democratic governance. The scope of the law—nominally
restricted in 2010 to narcotics and terrorism offenses—was widened to include
labor strikes, traffic disruptions, and the spread of false information.
Egypt could achieve almost
immediate progress by opening and defending the space for civil society and the
news media, while ensuring fair, open, and transparent elections in November
2011. But if these first-tier reforms in the areas of free expression and
association are not enacted and are prevented from growing roots, then the more
difficult overhauls of the judiciary, security services, and other state
institutions are far less likely to follow or succeed.
Tunisians favoured giving
religious leaders a say over government decisions in 2011, this percentage held
steady during the transition. In 2013, the share of Tunisians agreeing with
this statement was 24 percent, suggesting that support for political Islam may
even have gone up a bit. Meanwhile, trust in Ennahda, the main Islamist party,
also stayed fairly stable, dipping only five points to 35 percent. Taken
together, these results imply that the attitudes of Tunisians toward the
relationship between religion and politics and the country’s main Islam-based
movement changed little following the transition. Differences between the
Tunisian and Egyptian transitions likely explain the contrasting effects on
public opinion. In Tunisia, Ennahda won only a plurality of National
Constituent Assembly seats and formed a weak “troika” government with two
secular parties. Although feeble and unsteady, this arrangement fostered an
environment of democratic compromise and relative inclusiveness. Rather than
blame Ennahda or its ideology for transition-era travails, Tunisians updated
their beliefs about the costs and benefits of a democratic system. In Egypt,
Islamists won a commanding majority in parliamentary elections and narrowly won
the presidency. In November 2012, President Mohamed Morsi decreed that he would
be above the law pending the ratification of a new constitution. Soon
thereafter, the Islamist-dominated Constituent Assembly finalized a draft
constitution with no support from secular or minority voices. The Arab uprisings not only sparked major
transformations in some countries, such as Egypt and Tunisia, but also spurred
limited reforms in others, among them Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco. Despite all
these changes, however, publics across the region in 2013 tended to rate their
regimes as no more or less democratic than had been the case in 2011.
Tunisians, for example, had experienced free and fair elections but were still
no more likely to say that their regime was democratic (BBC, 2017). EU
announced its support for the democratic progress in Tunisia and Egypt, which
was followed by further unrest in several other Arab states, potentially
leading to radical changes of Middle East polity. An affirmative wording became
part of official EU documents, as it for instance could be seen when in 2011
the EU launched its renewed European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), stating that
the “EU needs to rise to the historical challenges in our neighborhood.” This
new version of the ENP was characterized by two significant elements. First of
all, the new policy allowed for an increased differentiation regarding the
links between each ENP-partner and the EU as to cater to the needs and
aspirations of the specific Mediterranean state. The principle of ‘more for
more’ was the second central pillar of the reformulated ENP, together with the
opposite, a principle of ‘less for less’. The latter signaled that the EU
intended to downgrade its relations with regimes, which violated human rights,
including making use of targeted sanctions.
The Algerian government
removed its incongruous 19-year state of emergency. Oman’s elected legislature
got the authority to pass laws. Sudan’s war criminal president promised not to
seek reselection. All the oil-rich states committed to wealth redistribution or
the extension of welfare services. But real-world politics is not just what
happens offline. A classically trained social scientist trying to explain the
Arab Spring would point to statistics on the youth bulge, declining economic
productivity, rising wealth concentration, high unemployment, and low quality
of life. These explanatory factors are often part of the story of social
change. It does not diminish their important causal contribution to the Arab
Spring to also say that digital media shaped events and outcomes: digital media
were singularly powerful in getting out protest messages, in driving the
coverage by mainstream broadcasters, in connecting frustrated citizens, and in
helping them realize that they shared grievances and could act together to do
something about their situation.
Evidence of NATO Support of Terrorism during the 2011 Arab Spring
There is significant evidence
to suggest that the Arab Spring in Libya, Syria and Tunisia were one of the
main reasons to the rise of terrorist activities thorough the Middle East with
criminal gang’s acquiring large scale military grade equipment from NATO and
who were benefiting from the large scale breakdown of law and order and also
the collapse of the criminal justice system. Some of the criminal and terrorist
activities included: “people trafficking, arbitrary detention, torture,
unlawful killing, indiscriminately attack, abduction, bombings and rape” (The
Foreign Affairs Committee, 2016).
‘The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists’. (Brad Hoff, 2017).
According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Centre, ‘the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters and bases for sending Al Qaeda and fighters of the Salafi-Jihadist movement’ into Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen during and before the start of the 2011 Arab Spring who wanted to destabilise and overthrow the governments in those countries (The Combating Terrorism centre, 2017).

The Hindustan Times reported in March 2011: ‘There is no question that Al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,’ Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times (Yashwant Raj, 2017). It has always been Gaddafi’s greatest enemy and its main stronghold is Benghazi. It is also reported that Al Qaeda flags were flown in the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled.
Incidentally,
Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West
Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda and Salafi terrorists.
Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda
stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion.  But NATO planes stopped
him, and protected Benghazi. ‘The White House and senior Congressional
members,’ the group wrote in an interim report released Tuesday, ‘deliberately
and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist
organizations in order to topple a ruler Muammar Gaddafi who had
been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda (BBC,
2017). “Some look at it as treason,” said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who
participated in the commission’s research.
The Aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring
As
of 2017, it seems that only in its birthplace, Tunisia, has the Arab Spring
been successful in the establishment of something which vaguely resembles a
Western style democratic system. Egypt saw its first-ever
democratically-elected president, the pro-Islamist Mohammed Morsi, overthrown
in a military coup in 2013 led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Libya has descended
into a civil war of its own, with four factions vying for supremacy: the
democratically elected Council of Deputies, Libya Dawn (an Islamist
organisation backed by Qatar, Sudan and Turkey), the Shura Council of Benghazi
Revolutionaries (again an Islamist organisation) and Islamic State. Syria
meanwhile presents a most complicated picture: Assad and the Free Syrian Army
are still fighting against one another; both are fighting against Islamic
State; an American-Arab League air force is bombing ISIS bases in eastern
Syria; and the Kurds are busy establishing an independent state in the north.
The Syrian civil war has become something of a proxy war, with behind the
scenes Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran all manoeuvring for advantage.
The
rise of Isis was in direct response to the funding and arming of rebel groups
such as the Free Syrian (BBC, 2017). American troops from Iraq in December
2011. In April 2013 Islamic State was created by a fusion of the Islamic State
of Iraq and the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (although not all members
of Jabhat al-Nusra support this. The Arab Spring protests were partly caused by
the rise on food prices across the region: one of the first actions by Islamic
State in any new territory it takes control of is to lower the price of bread.
As is often the case, people will submit to any kind of regime if their
personal safety is assured.
free
speech and civil society and arrested those calling for political change.
According to some analysts, Al Qaeda has some regional interests, which include
the ousting of the Shiite-aligned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while
supporting Islamists in the Middle East to attain power; or some of the goals
already achieved through recent Arab Spring uprisings, which have politically
destabilized the region already (Williams 2013). We are conscious of the
current turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, while various components
of Al-Qaeda hope to be able to consolidate amid the lawlessness and power
vacuums that have emerged in some regions following successful revolutions and
in areas experiencing on-going conflict. Equally aware, however, of Al-Qaeda’s
increasing marginalization, the group’s media publications continue to strive
to present jihadism as the most appropriate way to protect collective
interests, eliminate adversaries, eradicate vice and establish a zealously
pious social order. (Holbrook 2012). However, the biggest problem has been how
the Arab Spring took a lot of pressure off Islamic radical groups and allowed
these fanatics to more easily recruit, raise money, and organize more violence.
The revived Islamic terror groups promptly began attacking their former allies
(the secular and democratic reformers) as well as Westerners. The leaders of
the Arab Spring movements were initially sympathetic to Islamic radical groups,
seeing them as fellow victims of the old dictatorship. Now most of the Arab
Spring leaders see the Islamic radicals as more interested in imposing another
dictatorship.
 In 2011, the authorities carried out a major
campaign of repression in the wake of the Arab uprisings by censoring public
discussion of the movement for Arab democratization, prosecuting or arbitrarily
detaining scores of social-media commentators and human rights lawyers, and
strengthening the online censorship of domestic social-networking services.
However to the contrary violence continued unabated in 2011, with high-profile
political assassinations and high civilian casualty rates in Libya, Syria and
Egypt.
As
2011 drew to a close, officials in Egypt made headlines by conducting a series
of raids on NGOs that monitor human rights and promote democracy. Most of the
targeted organizations were Egyptian; a few were international groups (Freedom
House was one of the latter). The authorities were insistent that the raids,
which included the seizure of files and computers, were legal and technical in
nature. Government officials emphasized and reemphasized that they believed
human rights organizations had a role to play in a democratic Egypt. Their
actions indicated otherwise. In fact, the behaviour of the Egyptian
authorities, now and under Mubarak, reflects a deep-seated hostility to NGOs
that support democracy and human rights
There
were many heroes, many casualties, and many martyrs to freedom’s cause in 2011.
There were also many extraordinary achievements. Authoritarians who aspired to
rule in perpetuity were toppled in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and autocratic
heads of state in Yemen and Syria however who would know what would replace the
authoritarian structures of law and order, society and education
Foreign countries especially the West
including Britain, USA and France were the first countries to take advantage of
the deteriorating situation in the Middle East whilst not condemning the
violence, used this as a pretext to intervene in Sovereign nations for the
benefit of them self and not for the ordinary civilians  (Greenwald, 2017). 
The USA had early discomfort with democracy
as a foreign policy during the 2011 Arab Spring. ‘Despite the unfortunate
characterization that it was leading from behind, America’s firmness in
assisting NATO’s Libyan campaign was an important step. After initial
hesitation, the administration has also cautiously supported the process of
building democratic systems in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya’. It is a strong
contradiction where the NATO bombings were a pretext of getting rid of Muammar
Gaddafi and there was no plan on how the establish democracy after arming
terrorist groups according to the (Atlantic, 2017).
In
conclusion it is clear that the 2011 Arab Spring was a factor that caused the
rise of terrorist activities throughout the Middle East and the wider region.
Evidence of large scale protests harboured terrorist organisation such as
Al-Qeada who wanted to see revolutions take place throughout the Middle East
and the cause of the rise of ISIS who have pledged to reign terror around the
world. However other factors are responsible such as the British and US arming
rebel groups in Syria and Libya. NATO bombing campaigns in Libya. Democracies
were successful in Tunisia and Egypt, also in Libya but it is very difficult to
comprehend whether living conditions and freedoms have improved since the 2011
Arab Spring.
The 2011 Arab the rise of Democracy or Terrorism?
(The Combating Terrorism centre, 2017)

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Key words and definition:
Democracy: a system of
government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state,
typically through elected representatives.
Terrorism: the unofficial or
unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
ISIS: Islamic State of Iraq
and al-Sham