Analysis: What next for the Arab Spring?

THREE Arab rulers have been deposed this year, and each exit has been increasingly unenviable.

The former Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali swiftly fled to Saudi Arabia with his family, after being refused refuge in France at the end of two decades in power. Egypt’s former ruler, Hosni Mubarak, said he would not leave. He remains in Cairo, but in prison, facing charges that include ordering security forces to kill protesters. Mubarak appeared in court in August, lying on a hospital trolley, inside a metal cage – a dramatic image of a man who had managed to cling to power for three decades. And, of course, this week, the longest-lasting ruler of them all, Muammar Gaddafi, was shot dead in his home town of Sirte, after more than four decades in power. The graphic and gruesome images have circulated around the world; Libyans are plastering their Facebook pages with videos of the former tyrant begging, at the end, for his life.

Three years ago, Gaddafi said in one of his typically disruptive speeches at the Arab League that Arab rulers should beware that what happened to Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein could happen to them too, saying, “Your turn is next”. The West had been allied with Saddam, but then “sold him out”, he said. Apparently the audience laughed. Gaddafi was seen then as a buffoon, a throwback with a hilarious dress sense.

But those “your turn next” words must now be worrying other Arab leaders.

Syrian protesters have been chanting the same words to their president, Bashar al-Assad. The opposition there now faces a tough internal debate about whether to follow the Libyan example, take up arms and call for foreign support – which would be deeply divisive within Syria. In Yemen, where a young female protester has just won the Nobel Peace Prize, protesters are also struggling to dislodge their president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was nearly killed earlier this year, went to hospital in Saudi Arabia in what many thought would be a graceful exit, but who has now returned to Yemen where he continues to defy all predictions of his demise.

Meanwhile, the kings of Jordan and Morocco – Abdullah II and Mohammed VI – have promised reforms to give more power to their weak parliaments. The plausibility of these pledges remains to be seen – the region has a long history of promises of reform that have proven to be little more than cosmetic exercises, installing elected institutions that have little or none of the real power, and which have failed to provide mechanisms for resolving political conflicts in a peaceful and legal manner, leaving their countries with deep-seated problems that have flared up in different ways – such as in the uprisings in Bahrain against King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and in Oman against Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said this year.

Saudi Arabia also faces serious questions about its political future. Tomorrow will see the funeral of its crown prince and defence minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdel-Aziz al-Saud, believed to be aged at least 83, who had spent much of the past three years in hospital being treated for colon cancer. His presumed successor, his half-brother Prince Nayef, who is in his seventies, has been the interior minister since 1969 – taking the office just one year after Gaddafi became ruler of Libya. He is a leading conservative and seems uninclined towards political reforms.

There will be further ripples across the region. It is possible to imagine democracy spreading across the Arab world, as it spread across Latin America after decades of military rule in many countries. But much will depend on the success of the transitions in the countries where it all started. After all, Arabs saw a long-time ruler ousted in Iraq in 2003, which temporarily made other autocrats afraid, and prompted various reform pledges across the region. But the violence, corruption and sectarianism seen in Iraq tragically meant that the Iraqi model was used by other rulers as a counter-argument to anyone calling for democracy.