Tribune. Movements without leaders, blind and uncertain mass uprisings, on which the specter of Islamist recoveries and the threat of an extension of terrorism hovers, heterogeneous groupings united by their only opposition to the regimes in place: such is the vision of revolutions Arab who dominates the European institutions and the Western chancelleries. These anxiety-provoking representations motivate in France a diplomatic reluctance which justifies repeated support for corrupt and authoritarian regimes, even for the worst dictatorships. France, which offered its security expertise to Tunisian President Ben Ali a few days before his ouster by Tunisian protesters, today deplores, by the voice of its Minister for Foreign Affairs, the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri following pressure from the street, feeling that she "Aggravates the crisis", and reiterates its support for Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi a few weeks before his ouster by an unprecedented popular movement which mobilizes the Iraqi street against the corruption of its rulers.
Ten years after the start of the “Arab Spring”, Arab societies, largely unrecognized, rarely appear on the agenda of French and international political actors and are the subject of political arrangements which do not reflect their real role but rather the interests masters of the international game. When Western actors do not try to promote collectives like them or Gongo (“NGOs” raised by the government) created from the ground up by authoritarian regimes, they maintain political processes in which activists, independent NGOs, lawyers, cause lawyers and other figures of boiling Arab societies shine by their absence or marginalization. The treatment of Syrian civil society in peace negotiations is a textbook example: the constitutional committee set up by the UN in September 2019 to draft a new constitution for Syria includes a disparate mix of 50 personalities associating deputies of the regime and independent personalities, and the group is carefully distinguished in the negotiations of representatives of the"Political opposition".
Such a construction which artificially separates society and opposition has greatly contributed to maintaining a vision of the Syrian conflict as a " civil war " between political factions rather than a regime war against its own society. Above all, it remains blind to the constructive power of the popular uprisings, which since 2011 have demonstrated their organizational capacities but also their propensity to embody political and ideological alternatives to the regimes in place. From Egyptian “people's committees” to “coordination committees” and then to “Syrian local councils”, these social movements have demonstrated their remarkable organizational capacities. They have acquired administrative and legal know-how which has enabled them to overcome the failings of the State.