Corporate DispatchPro
The seasons of a revolution The popular revolts that raged across the Arab region in 2011 were a turning point, but the direction of change varied from country to country. Dr Tonio Borg, Malta’s Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, reflects on the events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya from a Euro-Mediterranean perspective. THE UNCONTROLLABLE SPREAD OF THE UPRISING Many observers were surprised that the Arab Spring started in Tunisia, which had the more liberal policies in the region and maintained good relations with the EU. But the uprisings quickly spread to Egypt and Libya, where the environment was completely different. Egypt, a vast country and the host of the Arab League headquarters, is widely considered a leader in the Arab world. Neighbours were particularly anxious about the Muslim Brotherhood swooping in to claim the void in power, as in fact happened for a while. Libya – caught between Tunisia and Egypt – was the third theatre of the Arab Spring. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and I had visited Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi just some days before revolts eventually broke out in his country and the Colonel expressed disappointment that the EU did not back Ben Ali in Tunis sufficiently. Gaddafi argued that, for all their shortcomings, the Arab regimes fended off the proliferations of extremism. FACTORS BEHIND THE REVOLTS The three Arab states were ruled with an iron fist. The strongmen in each country effectively imposed dictatorships on their people with public assets controlled entirely by the state leaders and in Libya the loyalty of the armed forces directed towards the heads of state personally. In the weeks and months following the revolts, obscene 17
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