Articles

Islamism and the “Arab Political Spring”

Vostok/Oriens '2014, №1

 
The events of 2011–2013 that gave rise to many illusions in the Arab world instead of democracy brought to power Islamists. The domination of authoritarian, and mostly military, modernizators was replaced by domination of the most extremist fraction of clerical traditionalists. The political and general impotence of the latter became soon evident. The impossibility to predict and to control their actions soon made them lost, or is making them lost, the support of Western countries. Therefore, they have lost power in Egypt, they are losing it in Tunisia, and they have not gained it in Syria and they are at crossroads in Libya defeated and actually disintegrated. In the entire Arab world the situation is unstable, in some parts semi-anarchic. The difficult economic situation makes the countries in which the “Arab Spring” events took place dependent on financial, technical and other assistance from the West and the oil monarchies of the Gulf. The latter not satisfied with it try to instigate Islamists the number and the military power of which is not diminished. The Islamists’ machinations concern also Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and… Russia. Their relations with the USA are complicated relations of “enemies-friends”. This fact was used by Russia in summer 2013 for preventing a military blow of the West against Syria which had been prepared for a long period of time. But the lack of regulation of all the complex of East–West relations and the instability in the Arab world make possible various changes of the situation in the region.

Keywords: Islamism, “Political Spring”, Arab world, “Al-Qaeda”, Wahhabite tandem, jihadists, salafits

Pages: С. 53–65