Arab spring: ‘Western-backed exported Islamist revolution’
Russia Today, Jan 26 2012
The string of uprisings in the Arab world boils down to Saudi Arabia and Qatar using money and influence to hijack public dissent and bring Sunni Islamists to power, says John Bradley, a British author and expert on the Middle East. He argues that the turbulence that saw several governments overthrown in 2011 came from sectarian divide among Muslims, which the West played on, to support its own allies. He told RT:
What we’re seeing is a Sunni-Shi’ite divide reemerge in the Middle East with Washington clearly backing the Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia, a close US ally. And Saudi Arabia in turn along with Qatar has taken control of the revolutions elsewhere. For example it’s funding the Ennahda, the main Islamist party in Tunisia. The Muslim Brotherhood and more extremist Salafi groups in Egypt on the record were saying they received substantial funds from Saudi Arabia. The Yemeni government has openly criticized Qatar for interfering in its internal affairs and funding radical Islamists. And of course in Syria the main civilian opposition is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the so-called Free Syrian Army is dominated by not only radical jihadists from within Syria, but also by jihadists from throughout the region.
Democratization: Indigenous Beats Imported
Ivan Eland, AntiWar.com, Jan 25 2012
The indigenous democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt seem to be progressing. Tunisia recently had successful elections, and Egypt seated its new parliament and will hold a presidential election in June. In Tunisia, Islamists won the recent election but have paired with more liberal parties to form a coalition government. Although the Egyptian parliament is dominated by Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that has a plurality in the legislative body, has gone “mainstream” and is cooperating with the military council’s timetable for transition to civilian rule. Although bumps on the road may arise and both of these countries may not have completely Western-style liberal democracies, their prospects for being long-term democracies look much brighter than in the three countries in which outside force was used to remove oppressive regimes.
