Looking at Iraq, Libya and Syria together, it seems safe to conclude that Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi and Hafez Assad were, and Bashar Assad is, the lids on their respective pots of sectarian tensions that boil over into large-scale violence, killings and displacement if the lid is removed. The uprisings of 2011 by the end of 2015 had produced more autocracy in some Gulf states, a return to military dictatorship in Egypt, anarchy in Libya and a brutal civil war in Syria. Velvet revolutions they were not. The “Arab Spring” darkened into the Islamist Winter and then the restoration of the authoritarian state as it failed to make the transition from the politics of street protests to the politics of democratic good governance.…  Seguir leyendo »