A gloomy picture

By M.R. | BEIRUT

Revolutions take time. Look at France, or America, or Russia. They were all messy and bloody and lasted for years.

We didn’t know the scale or shape of the problem we faced. Now we know.

The barrier of fear is broken. People will never bow or stay silent again.

WITH such words Arabs console themselves. Yet the fact is that three years after a despairing Tunisian barrow boy named Muhammad Bouazizi (pictured in the poster above) set himself on fire, kindling a region-wide sequence of revolts that some dubbed the Arab spring, a sense of deep disappointment has settled on the Middle East. It is not hard to see why.

What those popular uprisings demanded was an end to despotism, an end to humiliation at the hands of the powerful, and a better lot for everyone.

But the turmoil has brought few tangible rewards. Aside from such momentary thrills as watching dictators tumble, and marching shoulder to brotherly shoulder with one’s fellows, bellowing insults in a fleeting chorus of unified purpose, it has mostly brought trouble. "Revolution?" snorts a barber in Cairo. "It was a revolution against the people."

In the countries shaken directly by revolts—Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria—living standards have uniformly fallen. In some cases—particularly for the poorest and most disadvantaged, they have fallen precipitously. Mr Bouazizi’s hometown, Sidi Bouzid, where unemployment pushed 25% before the unrest, suffers an even higher rate now, and joblessness has surged in other countries, too. Nowhere have the stark divides between classes that underpinned political resentment, and which fueled not only revolution but religious extremism and violence, been addressed meaningfully.

The scorecard for democratic transition or even administrative reform is not much better. Egypt’s roller-coaster post-revolutionary politics have come full circle. The country may again get a wobbly veneer of democracy, but the same ruthless, paranoid deep state and the same business interests wield about the same unchecked power they did before. Tunisia is more promising, but even if its more cohesive and liberal-minded political elite stay on course, it will take years before real change comes to places such as Sidi Bouzid. Transitions in Libya and Yemen, meanwhile, remain imperiled by tribal and regional squabbles, as well as a proliferation of guns in the hands of radical Islamist groups. In Bahrain the revolution simply crumpled, crushed under the weight of arms and demonised by a Sunni ruling family that painted demands for democracy by the country’s Shia majority as a lunge for sectarian dominance.

Most other governments that survived the wave of change used softer tactics. Insulated by high oil prices, Gulf monarchies simply handed their people more money. But they have also clamped down on civil liberties; political repression is more severe than it was before 2011. Their rulers are more smug than ever, as is the Arabs' eternal enemy and political counterpoint, Israel, secure and prosperous as never before.

And this is not to mention the cost in blood of the Arab revolts, let alone the utter calamity that has befallen Syria’s 23m people, and increasingly many of their neighbours. Not only have at least 130,000 Syrians perished, and as many as 11m been forced to flee their homes. There is no end in sight to their misery. The concatenation of factors feeding into the Syrian morass, from meddling foreign powers to sectarian and class schisms, have created a perfect storm that may only be tamed by consuming itself.

Which leaves only those small consolations. Yes, it is true that most Western revolutions dragged on, and often devolved into terror. France did not really achieve a stable democracy until nearly a century after the fall of the Bastille. Yes, Arabs wishing for real change do now know much better what they are up against. But they have yet to find peaceful ways of getting there, or even of finding ways to agree on where to go. And although perhaps ordinary Arab citizens feel less fear of their oppressors, they have come to know other kinds of fear: fear of chaos and fear of each other.