Beware of Project Arab Spring

Is there an uncanny similarity between how things developed in Arab Spring in West Asia and how things are shaping up in the name of anti-CAA protest in India? Is there a veiled attempt to create a Civil War kind of situation in India in the name of opposition to an act passed by Parliament? Are some trying to create a Syria kind of devastation in India? The answers to these questions are chillingly a YES in capital words.

Almost a decade back, seeds of Arab Spring were sown in most of the states of West Asia and North Africa. What started under the pretence of spontaneous mass uprising against dictational regimes, the movements eventually turned out to be something else. In a matter of couple of years, several countries of the MENA region (Middle East & North Africa) were mired in devastating civil wars. The charade of peaceful agitation was exposed and soon the same protestors were found to be armed with the most lethal arsenals to wage wars against the incumbent regimes. Unrest took violent turn in the form of mutiny or civil war in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Oman, Algeria and even countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Some regimes cowed down and capitulated while others fought back.

A decade later, how does MENA look like? Many of the countries where Arab Spring originated have been devastated in never-ending civil wars, became testing grounds for global powers to wage their proxy wars and have witnessed violent rise of radical Islamist extremist organisations. The rise of violent Islamic terror organisations like ISIS would not have reached such cataclysmic level had there not been an Arab Spring in the MENA region which created the perfect fertile soil of chaos, anarchy and social turmoil for foreign intelligence backed extremist groups to sneak in and corrode states from within. Both in Egypt and Syria, radical Islamist organisation Muslim Brotherhood played a critical role in triggering turmoil and chaos in the name of Arab Spring.

In the case of Egypt, under the pretext of a mass movement, Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist organisation with stated objective of establishing a Sharia based society, forced the Incumbent Mubarak Government to resign followed by Muslim Brotherhood forming a government but the situation became so alarming that the Egyptian Army had to step in and remove the Muslim Brotherhood Government through a coup. The Easiest Pawn Incidentally, in most cases of Arab Spring in the MENA region, the seeds of anti-government agenda, disinformation campaign and attempts to trigger mass uprising were sown in universities. Students brimming with energy were easiest to brainwash through vitriolic speeches and ignite a violent movement for the smallest issues but those controlling them from behind the curtain had the ulterior objective of regime change or trigger civil unrest to destroy the nation from within.

What could not be done by detractors of Syria, Libya or Yemen through conventional wars, was done through student movement followed by mass protests followed by armed rebellion leading to civil war and when the society was in chaos and turmoil, the external elements sneaked in to causehavoc and take over the country. This is exactly what happened in most of MENA states. Western media played its sinister role in projecting protestors as heroes and regimes as evil. The same in reality however was not true always.

Syria was relatively a more liberal society and so was Libya. Today both have been destroyed and ravaged by violent civil wars with Islamist extremist groups waging war from within. The same is the case with Yemen while Egypt was saved by a timely military coup. How many in Syria or Libya today are happy about what happened to their countries in the last one decade and regret the turn of events? How many millions have died and for what? Some of the most advanced and developed cities of Syria be it Holms or Aleppo have been reduced to rubble. And it was all triggered from universities.

In the realm of psychological operations aimed at selective disinformation campaign to cultivate anger against a regime through systematic influence of emotions, an incident is often needed as a catalyst to ignite anti-establishment movement and initiate the first phase of civil unrest followed by armed rebellion at a later stage. However fake the narrative might be, at that moment it looks convincing to a section of audience, and social media, in addition to section of mainstream media, play their dubious role to amplify all of it to create hysteria and incite chain reaction. In such a scenario, any violent backlash by the incumbent government is used as another flashpoint to give more impetus to the uprising until it reaches a level where armed gangs take over the fight for executing the final goal. By then, those who were used for the first phase of agitation are dispensed of as pawns and nothing more.

If in case of Tunisia, it was the self-immolation of Mohamed Buazizi that was used a trigger to start the violent unrest, in case of India, similar attempts have been made in campuses of JNU, AMU, Jamia University, by using the suicide of Rohit Vemula as an issue to foment anger against Modi Government even though suicide of an individual, who was not even persecuted, prosecuted, detained, harassed by any agency, has nothing to do with the Central Government and is a mere local issue to be sorted by local police. And yet Modi Government was targeted and vilified because targeting Modi Government was the core agenda of Urban Naxal-Radical Islamist Syndicate.

Similar fake narratives were attempted by Urban Naxal-Radical Islamist syndicate when Hizbul terrorist Burhan Wani was shot dead by security agencies in restive parts of Kashmir. A section of left-leaning reporters, known for their double standards, tried to project Burhan not as a terrorist but as Hero (Sic !!). Interviews of his father and stories of his childhood was depicted as if he were a martyr who fought and died for India’s constitution ( Sic !!) while the truth was that he was a dreaded terrorist who wanted a Sharia-based state and had strong connection with Pak-based terror groups like Lashkar-e Taiba.

From the Burhan stories, the tukde tukde and Azadi slogans were conceived by the same gang which has been notorious for abusing armed forces and even celebrate often when Indian security personnel get killed in anti-terror operations. Young students of some select universities studying on heavily subsidised courses funded by taxpayers’ money, with little or no understanding of psychological warfare (of which they were becoming pawns) or the ground realities of hardships and toil that armed forces put every day to fight Pak-funded Islamist terror groups, fell for those fake slogans of AZADI devoid of any idea of what this AZADI slogan actually meant and how sinister the ulterior objective could be.

However, the tukde tukde agenda failed in its objective because it outraged majority of Indians so profoundly that it created a strong pro-nationalist counter movement across India to counter the fake narratives. The silent majority from across the spectrum of India cutting across caste and class barriers galvanised to vent their anger against left backed and separatist sloganeering rabble-rousers. They gave the tukde tukde gang and their backers a decisive blow by voting overwhelmingly to bring Modi Government back to power with an even biggest mandate. Project ‘ Arab Spring’ was down but not out. The Urban Naxal Radical Islamist Syndicate waiting for the next opportunity to attempt another resurrection.

Post victory in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the breakneck speed at which Modi Government went ahead to solve issues pending for several decades, including abrogation of Article 370, conclusion of the Ayodhya Ram Temple issue, passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act, has invariably rattled the vested interests and the promoters of India’s version of Project ‘Arab Spring’.

If they were looking for a trigger to restart their ‘Arab Spring’ experiment, ignorance about Citizenship Amendment Act was the perfect ploy to capitalize on. The rest is history. The kind of sloganeering including the likes of ‘Jinnah Wali Azadi’ that India has been witnessing for more than a month now, corroborates apprehensions that the objective of the present has very little to do with Citizenship Amendment Act and is just a small part of a bigger conspiracy. Statements of likes of Sharjeel Imam, a former JNU student, exhorting Muslims to cut of Northeast India from rest of India or the statement by former AMU student leader Faizul Hasan that ‘We are from that community which can destroy any country if we feel like’ are extremely similar to the kind of statements used in Arab Spring in Middle East to exhort people to wage battle against their own states.

The dharna in Shaheen Bagh or the planned destruction of public properties including trains and buses and the manner in which it is being synchronised, proves that Project ‘Arab Spring’ has moved out of the corridors of JNU and Jamia into the streets. This means Phase II of the Project Arab Spring has been activated and from the middle of such assembly, provocative statements are being made to activate Phase III which would be nothing less than armed rebellion. While most of the protestors may not want this, unfortunately those who are acting as their pied pipers exactly want that to happen. Western media then would once again play a dubious role of justifying even that just as they justified war against Assad regime in Syria and continued to demonize incumbent government there until it became clear that the democratic movement there had already been hijacked by radical islamist organisations and the likes of ISIS.

India, with a near $ 3 trillion economy is now on its journey towards becoming a $ 5 trillion economy over the next 6-7 years. Modi Government has in the last five years genuinely empowered the downtrodden, plugged leakages of government funds, went ahead with major structural reforms and embarked on military modernisation at a rapid pace. For many of India’s bête noire and adversaries, a strong India is a nightmare. When India could not be weakened through conventional and sub-conventional warfare, when Modi Government could not be toppled electorally, attempts are being made to ravage India from within through disinformation campaign and triggering of unrest and then falsely pin blame on Modi Government to tarnish its image globally. All this is aimed at making India weak again and to prevent India from becoming a global investment destination.

While Government of India has shown reasonable restraint as of yet and while protests and agitations are normally a healthy sign of a democratic society, it is important for the nation to remain vigilant. Those who are attempting something sinister under the garb of agitation and mass movement should be exposed and taken to task. The vicious Project ‘Arab Spring’ agenda must be countered and thwarted to prevent India from becoming a Syria or Libya.