Less springs and more investment
The celebration of the anniversary should serve to provide a real insight into the tragedy and failure of the misnamed "Arab Springs".
In the so-called and supposedly civilised world of the West, we are very given to celebrating anniversaries and to giving some events a witty name. Something like the fight against the COVID-19 by applauding at eight o'clock in the evening or singing from the balconies. The result is extremely frustrating and shows that behind this modern political and social marketing there is only the contemptible intention of manipulating the situation to mask reality and avoid responsibility. However, with greater or lesser repercussions and better or worse consequences, the truth or part of the truth ends up prevailing, even if the intention is to reduce the degree of influence it can have on citizens' confidence, that is, by trying to keep the votes, which is the only thing that seems to move and interest most politicians.
December marks another anniversary of the so-called "Arab Spring". A term coined by the usual minds that are supposedly thinking in the West to define, catalogue, describe or enclose the yearnings for freedom and democracy that millions of people who are Arabs and Muslims so need, deserve and are entitled to. In this case, the term "Arab Spring" or "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia, the origin of the protests, was somewhat similar to what Europe experienced in the former Czechoslovakia with the "Prague Spring" in 1968 and the "Velvet Revolution" in 1989. There are many more flowery expressions, epithets to encapsulate the events that have prevented us from going deeper into the complexity of each of them and, above all, from denouncing the suffering of the people involved in each case and in each place. There is a notable difference between what occurred in Europe, where a good deal of the necessary investment was made in matching the economy and development of the former Eastern European countries in their democratic transition, albeit with uneven results, as we can see in Poland and Hungary; and in the Arab countries, where the West's impetus remained largely in the form of moral support and testimony, but was forgotten after the frivolous and populist promises.
The bloodiest case of Western responsibility, where there were more than promises, was in Libya, where some European countries intervened militarily to overthrow the dictator Muammar al-Qadhafi, bury outstanding debts and then abandon to their fate a country that has been torn apart by paramilitary militias and Islamist groups that supported the interests of those who only aspired to control Libyan oil. Not to mention the war in Syria, where other struggles for regional hegemony have been waged. Nothing blooms in that spring, only dead Arabs.