ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
When the Syrian revolution began back in 2011, the country was not alone. Syrians joined a wave of uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. The movement started in Tunisia, with the death of a 26-year-old fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: (Chanting in non-English language).
SHAPIRO: After being harassed by police, he set himself on fire in an act of desperation. That sparked mass demonstrations in a country where people had struggled against an autocratic government for years. Days later, Tunisia's president fell from power. Meanwhile, in nearby Egypt...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Chanting in non-English langauge).
SHAPIRO: ...Millions of Egyptians inspired by the revolution in Tunisia took to the streets, protesting the government of President Hosni Mubarak. Soon, he, too, was out of power.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HOSNI MUBARAK: (Non-English language spoken).
SHAPIRO: As the protests spread through the region, one dictator fell after another - Libya, Yemen. The movement was optimistically called the Arab Spring. But after the uprisings, many countries became more autocratic. Some are still stuck in chaos and war. In Syria today, many people are jubilant about the end of Bashar al-Assad's regime. So how do they avoid the same future as other Arab countries that overthrew dictators more than a decade ago and ended up worse off today? Steven Heydemann is director of the Middle East Studies program at Smith College, and he's here to help us answer that question. Welcome.
STEVEN HEYDEMANN: Good to be with you.
SHAPIRO: Every country is obviously unique, but to the extent that you can generalize, why did the revolutions of the Arab Spring that began with so much joy, optimism and hope go sour?
HEYDEMANN: Well, in some cases, the initial response of the government to mass protests was to repress them. In the case of Syria, and in the case of Bahrain, as well, protesters were met with force by governments that had no interest in responding to demands for political change from below. And the outcome was, in the Syrian case, to set the country on a path of extended civil war. In the case of Bahrain, repression worked, and within just a couple of months, protests had been suppressed. But in neither case have we seen the demands that were part of the protest movement in 2011 addressed by governments.
SHAPIRO: I mean, if you look at North African countries - Egypt, you think about what happened in Tahrir Square, where these crowds of people joyously overthrew the Egyptian dictator - today, the country is more autocratic than it was before the Arab Spring. Tunisia, where the revolution began, where the Arab Spring movement began, for a few years, looked like it was going to be a democratic country, and now it has backslid into autocracy. It seems like none of these countries are far better off than they were before this began.
HEYDEMANN: That's correct, and one of the principal causes of backsliding in Tunisia was the failure of the democratic government that took shape after 2011 to respond effectively to the economic grievances that were so important in sparking protests in the first place. In the Egyptian case, there was a democratic election that brought a member of the Muslim Brotherhood to power for the first time in Egypt's history. But after a year of very tense relations between that government and the military, the military stepped in in 2013, overthrew the democratically elected president and set Egypt back on a path of increasingly harsh authoritarian rule.
SHAPIRO: And so you have all these examples of countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa that were unable to create democratic governments that were responsive to the demands of the people. Syria is now at a crossroads not all that different from the crossroads that these other countries were at after they deposed their dictators. What's the lesson here?
HEYDEMANN: The lesson, I think, is that we need to be watching carefully to see the direction that the transition in Syria takes. There had been some promising signs from the rebel authorities that now constitute a caretaker government. They've reached out to minorities. They've reassured women. They've offered assurances to external governments about not permitting groups like ISIS to play a role in the transition.
And in addition, Syrians themselves have had now 12 or 13 years to think about what they want and to begin to think about what a transition to a more democratic country would look like. The question is whether the Syrians who've done that planning and thinking will be given a voice in the transition. And it's a bit too soon to say. But right now, it's clear that the rebel group that led the operation overthrowing the Assad regime is in charge of the transition, and we haven't seen as much openness to other voices as we might like.
SHAPIRO: How much is this ultimately in the hands of the rebel group that overthrew Assad - HTS - and how much is the result of larger forces that are out of the control of any one ruling party?
HEYDEMANN: Well, for the time being, we're seeing an important degree of unity among a wide range of opposition factions that have an interest in the outcome of Syria's transition. It's entirely probable that tensions will emerge. It's likely that conflicts will erupt about all kinds of critical questions concerning how the country is run.
But for the moment, what we're seeing is really quite a remarkable degree of unity. We have seen minorities - including those from the sect to which Bashar al-Assad himself belonged, the Alawites - sign assurances that they want to participate in shaping a new Syria. We've seen the same kind of assurances from other minorities in the country. Whether that will last is, of course, an open question, but that unity in this early phase is a source of some promise, I think, about where Syria might be headed.
SHAPIRO: It's obviously been less than a week since the al-Assad regime fell, and we don't know where things will go, but do you believe that Syria can accomplish something that none of these other countries that were part of the Arab Spring were able to achieve?
HEYDEMANN: Well, I think Syria faces significant headwinds, and they arise in part from the identity of HTS as an Islamist movement.
SHAPIRO: Still considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
HEYDEMANN: Correct. And even if HTS no longer embraces the more violent Jihadist ideology that it did in its earlier incarnations, I think it still envisions governing Syria in an Islamist fashion. I'm sure it will be a problem for some segments of Syrian society. And it's also important to note that HTS has governed in Idlib province in the north of Syria for the past four or five years and has done so in a fairly heavy-handed fashion. It is not a democratic movement. And so, to the extent that it now is expressing a willingness to be more inclusive in how it shapes a future Syria, we really do have some reasons for concern in terms of whether it will live up to those commitments down the road.
SHAPIRO: Steven Heydemann is director of the Middle East Studies program at Smith College. Thank you for talking with us today.
HEYDEMANN: Thank you very much, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
