The Arab Spring has raised many questions about the problems related to foreign intervention. These interventions were never far from Arab Spring countries and took many forms: Providing aid, supplying weapons to the different parties involved or intervening directly.
We find direct or indirect foreign intervention in most conflicts that take place in one country, or between one country and another. Examples of that are the Arab-Israeli wars, the Iraq-Iran war and the Bosnian war, apart from the civil wars in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the series of Arab Spring conflicts, especially the one in Syria.
Foreign forces that intervene in such wars have different motives. Some are preventative, others are for expanding influence, while still others get involved keeping humanitarian ends in mind.
In Africa, Asia and Latin America, foreign interventions are either of a humanitarian nature or to tip the balance in favour of one group or the other. The first type of interventions aim at providing the minimum requirements for those who have been displaced, rendered homeless or have become refugees in neighbouring countries as a result of the conflict. This type of foreign intervention is unbiased and the aid coming through it is not necessarily from government departments alone; non-governmental organisations are also involved. There are highly reputable international organisations trying to reduce human sufferings, despite the fact that they only employ their limited resources.
The second type of intervention is political in nature and aims at ending the conflict to the advantage of one party through an incitement campaign in the media or arming one party against the other or imposing a no-fly zone or by directly deploying military forces. Justifying foreign intervention takes many forms. Some justifications are either humanitarian, security related — for the benefit of the intervening party, to defend the interests of its allies — or the intervention itself is a part of a long-term strategy that requires the drawing of new maps. The scale of foreign intervention gets deeper when it earns international consent and legitimacy. The crisis-stricken country is then taken to the United Nations to acquire a resolution. This starts with condemning the country, imposing sanctions and the process reaches its peak by placing the country under the UN Charter’s Chapter 7, which annuls its sovereignty — as in the case of Iraq.
The first type of intervention does not place any constraints on the country. However, the second type of intervention is different, no matter how innocent or humanitarian it may seem. Its repercussions continue for a long time and hit at the core of the nation’s sovereignty and its freedom to make decisions regarding its wealth. Direct or indirect foreign intervention also has grave repercussions on the national values of the country, wherein the country refuses any outside intervention in minor national issues, let alone a military occupation.
Toppling political regimes through direct or indirect foreign intervention has created many problems in countries where change has taken place. The instability in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt may well continue for years to come.
This instability is due in the first place to the difficulties faced in rebuilding the country. The vacuum created by the downfall of regimes is not an ordinary one. The political blocs that come to power and became decision-makers after the downfall of the regimes face tremendous difficulties in rebuilding the nation. They find themselves captive to the will of other nations, which helped bring about the change, as interventions scarcely ever end with simply the toppling of existing regimes. Besides, these political blocs are ignorant about how democracy works or do no believe in democracy at all.
The resulting situation entails the postponement of the re-building process. Additional conflicts arise between political blocs that aim to remain in power through ways that may seem democratic, but are totally contradictory to democratic values.
The weakness of these leaders, the long absence of the middle-class from the political scene of the country concerned and the immigration of liberal elites to the West during the reign of totalitarian regimes are some of the elements that contribute to the inability of these nations to re-build themselves. The raging civil war in Syria, where foreign intervention takes so many forms, is a clear case in point. The conflict is very complicated, not least due to the regime’s brutality.
Dr Mohammad Akef Jamal is an Iraqi writer based in Dubai.
