http://www.thestar.com/article/1115555–arab-spring-passes-canada-by
Haroon Siddiqui
A year ago yesterday, six limos left the presidential palace in Tunis for the airport where the waiting presidential jet whisked Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his family into exile. Ten days later, on Jan. 25, Egyptians took to Tahrir Square and by Feb. 11 had toppled Hosni Mubarak. On Feb. 17, Libyans started their own revolution and by Aug. 21 had taken over Tripoli, with NATO’s help, and by October captured and killed Moammar Gadhafi.

Dictators in Yemen, Syria and Bahrain are still in power only by murdering, jailing and torturing their own people.

Monarchs in Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and elsewhere have made legislative concessions or bribed their citizens to buy temporary peace.

Never before has the world witnessed such momentous uprisings in so many nations in such sequence. The revolutions have ushered in historic changes and upended decades-long western-domination of the Middle East through autocratic and corrupt client regimes.

The United States, under Barack Obama, is adjusting to this new reality with alacrity. But Canada, under Stephen Harper, is not.

While the Prime Minister makes much of Canada’s minuscule role in the military mission in Libya — it served his wish to flex our mini-military muscle abroad — he has offered little help to the millions of Arabs risking their lives for freedom. He does not relate to them. Indeed, he has let it be known that he preferred the “stability” of the autocrats.

The democratic forces have been remarkably peaceful. The violence has come from the rulers — not just from Syria’s Bashar Assad but also from western allies, such as the Egyptian military junta, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh and Bahrain’s King Hamad.

As in grassroots movements anywhere, women have broken barriers and emerged as partners. The struggle has turned out to be not anti-western or anti-Israel but pro-freedom and democracy.

Elections in Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, the first free and fair ones in decades, drew a record number of voters and went off smoothly. That proved that American military invasion, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, is not the only way to introduce democracy to Muslim lands. It also disproved the racist notion that democracy is not part of the Arab DNA.

Islamists emerged winners in all three elections — as they will in Yemen and Syria as well, when the time comes. The results were a surprise only to the western media that often talk only to those who can confirm their own prejudices.

The Islamists have turned out not to have horns. Some have sounded scary but most have been pragmatic. So have been the voters supporting them. They seem far less theologically driven than the rank-and-file and the leadership of the Republican party.

Their real test will be how they address deeply entrenched economic problems and create jobs for the young who constitute a majority of their populations.

The Obama administration is talking to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It has warned the military regime against delaying transferring real power to the elected government.

Washington must start shifting its $1.3 billion annual aid from military to civilian use, and also help arrange assistance from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, not just for Egypt but also Tunisia and others.

It needs to make good on its warning to Bahrain that all military aid would be cut off unless the human rights of the island’s majority Shiites are respected by the Sunni king.

This is the least Washington owes the Arab people in whose oppression it has long been complicit.

For the beleaguered Syrians, the West is not in a position to offer military intervention. As Prof. James Reilly of the University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations explains:

On Libya — distant, remote and ruled by a leader who had few friends and had lost control of part of his country — the initiative came from the Arab League. But its 22 members do not want western intervention in Syria — densely populated, strategically located and with an entrenched regime that has friends in Lebanon, Iran and Russia. The latter is threatening a veto in the Security Council to prevent intervention.

So tighter sanctions it shall be for now — with the full cooperation of non-Arab Turkey, a thriving democracy, which has emerged as a model for Arabs.

As the decrepit old order is being replaced by a healthier one, the U.S. and others are trying to be on the right side of history. But not Canada.

hsiddiqui@thestar.ca