Aleppo Fell. The Rest of the Middle East Is Wobbling.
The breakthrough for anti-regime forces reveals the unresolved tensions from the 2011 Arab Uprisings.
THE SUDDEN LOSS OF ALEPPO, Syria’s second-largest city, to a ragtag group of rebels stunned much of the world this past week. After years of gruesome warfare, the Syrian Civil War had seemed to reach a stalemate—until anti-regime forces recaptured a major city. Now the army loyal to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, may be on the run from a Turkish-backed militia with radical Islamist ties.
While for more than a year, much of the world’s attention has been captivated by the war between Iran (and its proxy groups) and Israel, the broader Middle East and North Africa are riven with conflicts. The region has no fewer than three simmering civil wars (Libya, Yemen, and Syria) with one very hot civil war in Sudan. The civilian death toll in Sudan is higher even than the devastation of Gaza with as many as 100,000 dead. In addition, the massive country faces a collapse of its major institutions, resulting in famine, public health emergencies, and millions of displaced people. If the uneasy balance of power in Libya were to fail like it has in Syria this past week, the region could have no fewer than four active conflicts, stretching the ability of responders like the United Nations and the International Red Cross to provide even basic humanitarian aid.
Since the 2011 Arab Uprisings (formerly and optimistically known as the “Arab Spring”), the most authoritarian region in the world has also become the most brittle. After the uprisings that toppled governments from Tunisia to Yemen and destabilized several more, stable political bargains have yet to replace them, leaving violence as the only accessible option for people seeking change.
Though a majority of Arab states do not have insurgencies, this apparent peace masks bitter political tensions. The most promising democratic experiment born from the Arab Uprisings ended when Tunisian President Kais Saied shut down the country’s democratically-elected parliament in 2021. The Middle East is today more repressive than it was in 2010. The authoritarian regimes that have emerged since 2011 have lobotomized their unruly civil societies but have yet to reach a lasting consensus on what they should provide the population in exchange for acquiescence.
The new class of dictators, including Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed, and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, project an aura of invincibility by undermining long-held norms such as a commitment to the Palestinian cause and the untouchability of the Islamic clerical class. Their control over the repressive apparatus, comprising revolutionary forms of techno-surveillance borrowed from China along with old-fashioned secret police, allowed these autocrats to hammer through changes that prior rulers could only dream of—but not necessarily the changes that bring long-term stability or regime legitimacy.
No one embodies this dangerous dynamic more than MBS. Coming to power in 2017 as the youngest Saudi crown prince since the 1950s, he signaled his willingness to change the status quo by imprisoning dozens of royals in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh under Kafka-esque accusations of corruption. There is no clear line of separation between what the royal family owns and what the state owns; by any reasonable definition, MBS and his entourage have as much ostentatious wealth as those he accused, and he came by it no more honestly. Nonetheless, the Saudi public largely approved of his “anti-corruption” campaign, which he parlayed into an assault on conservative religious institutions by allowing women to drive, opening the country to tourism, and most recently, hosting a Jennifer Lopez concert in Riyadh. At the same time, he has garnered a reputation for brutality, especially after the slaying and dismembering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Like other dictators in the region, MBS’s reforms substitute flashy disruption for reforms that many need, such as transparent and accountable government.
MBS, though, may have run out of tricks. A fall in oil revenues has cut short his signature ambition, a proposed mega-city called Neom to be built in a straight line over hundreds of miles in the desert that would host thousands of tech entrepreneurs. After spending an extraordinary amount of money on consultants and architects, the plan was recently scaled back to a much more modest design. Similarly, the kingdom’s splashy ownership of the LIV Golf League, which successfully won over all-star players from the PGA Tour, has yet to result in meaningful tourism revenue that could offset the staggering cost. Facing a ballooning Saudi population and a decline in crude prices, MBS may soon find his bread and circuses too pricey.
The underlying problem is that authoritarianism is expensive. El-Sisi’s military regime in Egypt, for example, funnels hundreds if not billions of dollars in state contracts to military-linked companies that compete directly with the beleaguered private sector. Without this hard cash, El-Sisi could face threats from the generals who help secure his rule. Similarly, the UAE’s population is broadly supportive of Mohammed bin Zayed despite his peace deal with Israel and abandonment of Islamic norms like a Friday to Saturday weekend—but 90 percent of Emiratis have lucrative careers in the government and receive free health care, education, and no-interest real-estate loans. While the Gulf states may still have enough riches to head off contention in the near term, it’s not as clear if they can continue to do so once they complete their pivot away from the oil economy. Gulf countries bankrolled the region’s authoritarian push in the mid-2010s, propping up Egypt’s military regime and Libyan warlords, but falling oil prices combined with growing populations have crimped their largesse amid dismal economic performance over the past five years.
The warning lights of economic distress are flashing across the region. Both Egypt and Tunisia are on the brink of economic collapse as they remain in negotiation with the International Monetary Fund over rescue packages. Egypt’s regime seems particularly vulnerable as their hands-off policy toward the Israel-Hamas war is objectionable to its core nationalist base. Tunisia’s quixotic president, on the other hand, is more in sync with Arab feelings about Israel, but has yet to come up with a plan to stave off fiscal collapse. Both of these countries witnessed massive waves of mobilization in 2011, and a new generation has emerged that sees the gap between the promises of those revolutions and the dreary present reality. It is not possible to predict if or when these tensions could flare up into a new popular movement for regime change, but it is clear that dictatorship alone has yet earn popular consent through economic growth or quasi-liberalization.
We should not assume that Arabs will accept this state of affairs in perpetuity—the Arab Uprisings never truly ended. Several other Arab states survived the initial wave of the Arab Uprisings in 2011 but later experienced similarly destabilizing waves of contention years later. Algeria’s Hirak movement in 2019 mobilized millions to protest weekly, successfully pushing the aging military dictator stepped down. The movement seemed unstoppable until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing protesters to stay home. While a new military ruler is in place, and the post-pandemic oil price bump helped him soothe popular unrest, this year’s oil glut is undercutting the state’s rentier bargain.
Around the same time in 2019, Lebanon’s youth launched an effort to radically transform the country’s sectarian institutions, calling for an end to the system of religiously affiliated rulers who protect their own at the expense of the country. While these protests shook the political establishment, the pandemic also undercut the movement before it could achieve real results, leaving the question of reform unresolved. The devastation of southern Lebanon over the past two months, combined with the recent assassination of Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, raises profound questions about the future of the country once the conflict dies down.
Similarly, Jordan has also seen periodic outbreaks of protests from younger Jordanians tired of the country’s peace treaty with Israel. While Jordan’s king is known for nuanced policymaking, the regime has also lurched towards authoritarianism in recent years.
Rather than answer big questions about political legitimacy, the new generation of Arab strongmen have relied on repression and demobilization of civil society along with extravagant promises of economic growth to govern. Authoritarian bargains can last for a long time, as the durable pre-Arab Uprising dictatorships proved. However, Middle Eastern leaders have yet to show a way forward beyond repression and corrupt state-led “development” that requires constant infusions of aid. Authoritarianism is expensive, and it is not clear who will continue to foot the bill for Middle Eastern dictators.
This ever-present brittleness, combined with the civil wars in Sudan, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, render the region extraordinarily prone to shocks like the recent rebel success in northwest Syria. The Arab Uprisings did not result in democracy, but there is no reason to believe that these contentious movements have concluded. Ostensibly, a peaceful and prosperous Middle East is in the interests of everybody, but practically, neither leaders in the region nor those outside of it have yet found a realistic path toward that goal.
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