Eleven years after its launch, the Arab revolution no longer embodies in the memory of the defeated peoples freedom from the authority of tyrants, nor is it an option to break the pride of the powerful again. Making the talk of the revolution stop everyone at the chapters of defeat and silence.
History tells us a forgotten chapter about the French Revolution that crushed its enemies and itself, and ended with the inauguration of Napoleon Bonaparte, the first republican president to exercise dictatorial rule with the powers of the old king. A more solid and tyrannical military regime than its predecessors.
As for the countries that are still experiencing successive defeats, such as Libya, Sudan and Yemen, armed conflicts and ideological interests have crowded out and even overpowered the national interest, as certain personalities sought to achieve narrow goals at the expense of the peoples themselves, and because of the internal struggle for influence and positions, leaders emerged from the ranks of Revolution and openly sided with its enemies.
In this report, we narrate three separate stories and facts of people who destroyed a revolutionary reality in which they participated, and reshaped it according to their goals.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.. the cunning of victory
On January 27, 2011, the winds of the Arab Spring blew in the heart of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and when it seemed that the star of the former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had faded, and those voices that roared anger in the squares would sooner or later push him out of power, The Houthis were quick to announce their presence in the revolution, as they are the sons of the Zaidi Shiite sect characterized by the character of rebellion, and one of the groups that were most subjected to injustice and marginalization during the six previous wars that "Saleh" fought against them, before he was surprised by fierce resistance and an unexpected military supremacy.
Neither the cunning of politics nor the violence of confrontation succeeded in helping the Yemeni president, who ruled the country for three decades, to regain control. At the same time, they tightened their control over the northern governorates, including Saada, the group's main stronghold and its political fortress, while urging southern Yemen, which is witnessing a Sunni majority, to rebel as well to revive the dream of secession again.
In light of a turbulent political reality, Saudi Arabia rushed and intervened with its influence at home, and reached the "Gulf initiative" that envisioned the transitional authority through the departure of Saleh, in exchange for granting him immunity that protects him from accountability.
After Saleh’s departure, the Houthis, seeking to revive the Hashemite Imamate, faced a new crisis that confused all their old calculations. Saleh, even if he was their enemy, remains one of the sons of the sect that maintained the north’s leadership of the central government, while the election of the interim Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi represents a resounding victory. For the Sunni south, which has just abandoned its separatist dreams of having one of its sons come to power since the Yemeni unity in 1990, all these concerns have become a reality that does not accept the possibility of the Houthis returning to the era of “political alienation” again after the Sunni south’s accession to the forefront of the central government, and what followed The rise of political elites hostile to the Houthi camp, both sectarian and political, represented by the Yemeni Congregation for Reform Party, which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and its military wing represented by the forces of "Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar", which has become a common enemy between the Houthis and their old opponent, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in a televised speech
And because politics is the most subtle game in which the permanent friend and the eternal enemy are absent, the young Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, rearranged his cards, and temporarily disavowed the fact that “Saleh” is his brother’s killer and the sworn enemy of his movement, and decided to rapprochement with him again, so that the two concluded a deal that changed the course of the revolution Yemen later, and turned it into a civil war with complex regional calculations.
This period witnessed a powerful political rise for the Yemeni Islah Party, whose powerful influence was evident on the corridors of politics and governance, which created a firm belief in both the ousted president and the Houthis that the presence of Sanaa outside their control, under the new rule, represents a definite danger to their political future, which is The same view that Saudi Arabia had, which waited nearly six full months for the fall of Sanaa to be sure of the defeat of its Sunni opponent at the hands of its Shiite enemy, before declaring war on Yemen under the slogan of restoring the stolen legitimacy.
The Houthis quickly realized the threads of the game and its dimensions, so they used the striking force of the Republican Guard and the Special Forces, which owe absolute loyalty to the ousted president to control 12 out of 22 provinces. In secret negotiations with Saudi Arabia to break up his partnership with the Houthis, according to leaks from an American website, in exchange for Riyadh guaranteeing him to return to power again, and while Saleh mistakenly believed that he was the strongest party in the conflict equation internally and externally, the military arsenal developed by the Houthis proved the invalidity of that belief that led to With his life killed, Saudi Arabia, and the Yemeni government behind it, was forced to negotiate for the first time with the Houthis, considering them as part of the political solution, without the language of war or policy tools being able to subdue them so far.
Fathi Bashagha... An ally of his enemies and an enemy of his friends
The current head of the Libyan government, Abd al-Hamid al-Dabaiba (right) and the prime minister-designate by parliament, Fathi Bashagha (agencies)
In Libya, the story was not about the same intertwined events that took place in Yemen. The hero of those lines is Fathi Bashagha, head of the new government appointed by the Libyan parliament, in contrast to the current transitional unity government headed by Abdel Hamid al-Dabaiba, which still enjoys international legitimacy from the United Nations. It insists on completing its tasks based on the political agreement led by the UN mission in Libya, and set the continuation of its work for 18 months ending in June 2022, which is the deadline for holding presidential and parliamentary elections, followed in theory by the handover of power.
The recent events blew the path of a man who was in contrast to what he was now ten years ago. Political ambition and the seduction of power turned all the cards of the equation in Libya, and charted a new course of events completely different from all the polarization between the East and the West that Libyans used to hear.
Until recently, Fathi Pashaga, the former Minister of Interior in the Government of National Accord, was seen as the de facto ruler of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the godfather of the Turkish-Libyan agreement that changed the map of the conflict, and the mastermind that thwarted the attack of Libyan General Khalifa Haftar on Tripoli, who had obtained an umbrella Legality granted to him by the Speaker of Parliament, Aqila Saleh, to subjugate the Libyan capital, was before circumstances changed and the political equations changed, as Saleh granted legal legitimacy to the government of his former enemy, Pashaga, while Haftar pledged to defend the latter against their common enemies.
Returning to the chapters of the beginnings, it will become clear to us more and more about the enormity of the surprise of the recent political change in Libya. Prominent in the Libyan revolution by communicating with NATO in a move that created him internal influence, in addition to being one of the founders of the well-known Islamic "Dawn of Libya" brigades, which broke Haftar's ambition several times, after it was formed mainly to confront his military project in a multi-dimensional war. The Libyan general tried He confined it to a secular ideological struggle against the empowerment of the Islamic currents that found themselves at that time in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.
Skhirat Agreement of 2015
But this change in the Bashagha site did not come overnight. Rather, it was preceded by some indications that the former officer, who is close to the Islamic movement and a wealthy businessman, had begun to make his way to be the most powerful man in the Libyan West. The features of that vision became clear gradually after he played a role in signing an agreement. Skhirat in 2015, which was considered the most important political agreement in the history of the crisis, as a result of this agreement, Bashagha ascended to the position of Minister of Interior in the Government of National Accord, taking advantage of his wide influence and his unparalleled will in the land of chaos teeming with militias and the most powerful of them fall directly under his banner , which allowed him to make Tripoli inaccessible to Haftar, with whom he shares almost everything from a dream of power and influence to open links with the West.
Bashagha represented a difficult figure in the Libyan conflict equation, until the rules of the game changed after the resignation of the Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord, Fayez al-Sarraj, and the intervention of the United Nations to arrange power, and reshape the political scene through new faces, after which Abdul Hamid al-Dabaiba ascended to head the government, and Bashagha did not get any role In addition, Khalifa Haftar was formally stripped of the position of Minister of Defense, although he actually retained it through his military control over the greater part of Libya, as Aguila Saleh, the actual godfather of the Tripoli war, became threatened with exit from the entire political scene, following the attempts of deputies to unify the divided parliament. Between East and West.
These changes prompted the losing parties to redefine their alliances and enmities in an unprecedented way. Yesterday’s enemies reorganized the scene with Egyptian sponsorship, and the beginning was the parliament’s exploitation of the failure to hold the presidential elections on time, which were scheduled for December 24, 2021, to decide to dismiss The Dabaiba government and Bashagha at the head of a new government, Aqila Saleh provided her with the legal umbrella, and Haftar welcomed her, while this change caused a new division in Libya, which was the victim of the western region, as its striking military force that was protecting it from the stalkings of the East became divided against itself, and threatened By fighting among themselves, as for the state of Libya, it seems that it is moving confidently towards the cycle of forming two parallel governments again.
Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, the predictor of Sudan’s crises
Sadiq Al-Mahdi
For many years, the family of the former Sudanese Prime Minister and the late Umma Party leader, Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, made the near history of Sudan, with his blood, pain, and victories. What was known as the "Mahdist Revolution", in response to the grievances of the government under the English tutelage in Sudan, attracted huge crowds of those whose hearts were attached to the Sufi Islam that permeated the Sudanese environment, until its movement attracted the flags of Islamic thought in the Arab world who shared the scourge of colonialism.
As for his immediate grandfather, he is Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, head of the Umma Party, who led secret negotiations with the British, and engaged in public confrontations, with the aim of separating Sudan from the Egyptian crown.
The son’s path is related to the path of his fathers in shaping the fate of Sudan, as the name of Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi is associated in the minds of the Sudanese with the last democratic era that the country witnessed, as the last elected prime minister before the army turned against him in 1989, and ascended in his place the ousted President Omar Al-Bashir, the opponent whose fates plunged In a revolution that toppled his regime in 2019, the old dreams of a man who had suffered political injustice throughout his life, declaring his alignment with the revolutionaries, returned.
He also rejected any political association with the government to contain the crisis, and as the most prominent leader of the opposition, he proposed the formation of a new government that includes all parties, which represented an explicit call for a coup against the Bashir regime.
This leading role qualified the "Mahdi" to lead the most prominent names of the possible succession of Al-Bashir, as he is an old face associated in the imagination of many with the absent democratic era, without reducing his age, which exceeded eighty at the time, the chances of his presence in the political arena, especially since he has not yet lost the lust for power that has been chasing him Even while he was in self-imposed exile in Cairo, he decided suddenly to stop the escalation against the government, and refused to call for a boycott of the elections that were scheduled for 2020, after an amendment that allowed Al-Bashir to remain at the helm, while his son was working as a personal assistant to the Sudanese president.
Even after the fall of al-Bashir, the stark contradictions that defined the path of al-Sadiq al-Mahdi persisted.
Contrary to all the civilian forces that demanded the Sudanese army to completely get out of the scene, the man publicly sided with the military council, and saw that the safest solution to cross the country out of its predicament was not to confront the stronger party in the equation (meaning the military establishment), and considered that the revolutionaries’ mistakes would lead soon There are three scenarios: chaos, a military coup, or a jump to early elections.
Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, who died in 2020, did not witness the paradox of the situation between the civil and military components, which prompted the head of the Sovereign Council, Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan to carry out a military coup against the government of Abdullah Hamdok in October 2021, to enter the country into an unknown stage that did not end So far, with dark scenarios hovering on the horizon, while the scenario closest to reality, and to the heart of the country's military as well, remains the call for early presidential elections with those who attended, which represents the second part of the "Mahdi of Khartoum" prophecy that ignited the revolution before he sided with its enemies. .
The Mahdi sided with the Bashir regime, and Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and Fathi Bashagha put their hands in the hands of their opponents, who were hostile to the revolutions to which they belonged before. The revolution that broke out one day in Tunisia and whose demands for justice, freedom and equality touched other Arab countries that are still living through the difficult pangs of the Arab Spring.