After the initial round of soul searching, in the years that followed Arab Spring, the discussion progressively shifted toward criticism that nonviolent revolutions failed to bring about sustained positive change and, instead, after their victories, left a power vacuum that was quickly filled by people with arms. Such a critique has always been the refrain of autocrats, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin and his acolytes, who painted the Arab Spring and earlier color revolutions as events that led to chaos, violence, instability and extremism.
Their political motivation is obvious—any challenge to the autocrats in other countries is indirectly a challenge to their own authoritarian rule at home. As developments in the post-Arab Spring countries progressed, for their part, scholars , media commentators and policy experts became less focused on the obvious capability of nonviolent revolutions to bring down entrenched undemocratic regimes.
Instead, they expressed increasing apprehension that popular nonviolent movement-based changes lead, in fact, to violence, civil wars, violent extremism, and the reemergence of authoritarianism.
In Egypt, general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi not only restored authoritarian rule two years after the fall of Mubarak, but his regime is considered much more oppressive to civil society and independent organizing than that of his predecessor. In Syria, hopes of political change quickly degenerated into all-out civil war, and likewise in Yemen, violent conflict eventually ensued, and now a continued external violent intervention has added volatility to the region.
Should it be concluded, therefore, that nonviolent movements in general are followed by major risks of backsliding and civil war? In our view, the answer is no. First, data and numerous studies show that the chances of democratic outcomes from nonviolent movements are vastly higher than for other forms of transitions.
Secondly, with regard to the Arab Spring in particular, dynamics and impacts of revolutions differed from country to country. For example, the effects of civil resistance were often tangible, such as the process of military defections that saw soldiers refuse to follow orders to shoot unarmed protesters. However, instead of joining and bolstering nonviolent resistance, military defectors in some countries spearheaded armed resistance with devastating consequences—hardly the fault of nonviolent organizers.
In other words, a turn to violence meant the struggle was no longer civil resistance. Nonviolent uprisings were in essence hijacked by violent groups well before they could show positive impact or generate more long-term consequences. Severe destruction of property. Severe rage for seemingly minor reasons.
Other self-injurious behaviors or threats of suicide. Threats of lethal violence. A detailed plan time, place, and method to harm or kill others, particularly if the child has a history of aggression or has attempted to carry out threats in the past. Immediate intervention by school authorities and possibly law enforcement officers is needed when a child has a detailed plan to commit violence or is carrying a weapon. Parents should be informed immediately when students exhibit any threatening behavior.
School communities also have the responsibility to seek assistance from child and family services providers, community mental health agencies, and other appropriate organizations.
These responses should reflect school board policies and be consistent with violence prevention and response plans. Women who have managed to leave abusive relationships in the past year have often, somewhat paradoxically, found quarantining helpful in their recovery. Eventually, as vaccines roll out and case counts at last drop, all of the quarantining will end, and partners who were abused during lockdown may begin to re-emerge into the world, newly free to leave their tormentors behind.
If the uptick in calls the shelters have been receiving during lockdowns is any indication, there could be a lot of such flights to freedom to come. None of them will be easy. Many of them will be scary. No less than the battle against the COVID pandemic, the battle against the abuse pandemic is certain to be an ongoing one. Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey. By Jeffrey Kluger. Related Stories. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription.
Need help? But Rai, who attended a memorial service in Iraq last year for Christians killed in an attack on a Baghdad church, drew a parallel between Iraq and the rest of the Arab world, saying Christians could bear a disproportionate share of the suffering. Maronites, who have a presence in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus, follow an Eastern rite of the Roman Catholic church and number about , in Lebanon, around a quarter of the population.
But since protests erupted against President Bashar al-Assad many Christians have been uneasy about supporting the increasingly militarized and mainly Sunni Muslim uprising against his secular Baath Party, which ensured freedom of belief for minority faiths. The year-old Rai, elected patriarch on the same day in March last year that serious protest first broke out in Damascus against Assad, said Maronites were neither supporting nor opposing the Syrian authorities.
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