TWENTY-THIRTEEN has been a terrible year for several Arab nations.

It has been terrible because the promise of greater freedoms and political reforms has been reversed, violently in some instances, by taking a few countries down the path of anarchy and complete chaos.

Syria has been hit hardest. For months the United Nations has maintained that over 100,000 people have been killed in the 33 months of conflict.

The UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) says that millions of Syrians living in perpetual suffering are in need of aid. This number will reach 9.3 million by the end of next year.

OCHA’s numbers attempt to forecast the need for aid for the year 2014. However, that estimation reflects an equally ill-omened political forecast as well.

There are currently 2.4m Syrian refugees living in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. The number will nearly double to 4.1m by the conclusion of next year.

Considering the growing political polarisation between the Syrian parties involved in the conflict and their regional and international backers, there is little hope that the war will die away in the near future.

The simple narrative of a conflict between a central government and an opposition is no longer applicable since the opposition is itself fragmented into many parties, some with extreme religious agendas.

The early discourse that accompanied the Syrian conflict, that of freedom, democracy and such, is also of little relevance considering the level of brutality and the multiple objectives declared by the various fighting forces. But for Syrians it is a lose-lose situation.

Syrians involved in this war understand well that a prolonged conflict could mean that the country faces the risk of complete breakdown and that a Somalia or an Afghanistan scenario is in the offing.

If so few would even care to remember the original reasons that the war started, as several generations of Syrian refugees would be doomed to live the same fate as the unending Palestinian refugee experience.

However, there is a glimmer of hope.

The recently signed landmark deal between Iran and six other countries — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — could usher in at least the possibility of resolving the crisis in Syria through dialogue.

True, the deal was related to Iran’s nuclear programme, but since most of these countries are active participants in the Syrian war, with much influence over the warring parties, their consent would be necessary for future dialogue between Damascus and the opposition to bear fruit.

But a major question will continue to surface. Even if the secular Syrian opposition agrees to a future arrangement with the current Syrian government, will that have any bearing on other extremist forces fighting for their own causes?

Even in the most optimistic assessment the Syrian conflict is unlikely to be settled in 2014.

The same assessment is also relevant in the case of Egypt.

In 2013 the conflict in Egypt has taken on a different dimension.

One main reason behind the confusion is that reporting on the January 25 2011 revolution was overly sentimental and simplified.

In some aspects, the bad guys v good guys scenario continues to define the Egyptian turmoil.

The Egyptian media is a prime example of that. Since the June 29 protests which were followed by a military coup on July 3, most secular forces affiliated with the revolution lined up in support of forces affiliated with the deposed Mubarak regime.

Both camps united in opposition to a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It gets more convoluted still, since the Islamic Salafist al-Nour Party had no problem siding with the military in support of its newly drafted constitution, although it was al-Nour that tirelessly lobbied for a sharia-driven constitution under the leadership of deposed president Mohammed Morsi.

It was that kind of pressure that drove many secular parties away from the committee that attempted to draft an earlier constitution, leaving the Brotherhood isolated. Al-Nour and secular parties are now standing in the same political camp.

The phrase “dirty politics” doesn’t even begin to describe what has befallen Egypt.

Nearly 20,000 Egyptians are now sentenced or facing trials for belonging or supporting the “wrong” political camp.

The military-backed government is now unleashing a “legal onslaught,” freeing those who affiliated with the Mubarak regime and imprisoning those affiliated with the Brotherhood.

On December 21 toppled president Morsi was referred by Egyptian prosecutors to a third criminal trial on “charges of organising prison breaks during the 2011 uprising, spreading chaos and abducting police officers in collaboration with foreign militants.”

Brotherhood lawyer Mohammed el-Damati described the purpose of all of this as an attempt to defeat every single achievement of the January revolution.
“They are going over January 25 2011 with an eraser,” he said. But will they succeed?

While the military enjoys a great sway over every facet of power in Egypt, the Egyptian people are no longer passive participants.

Reversing the achievements of the revolution will not necessarily affect the collective mindset that gave the Egyptian people the kind of zeal that made them stand and fight for their rights.

No military dictats or legal manoeuvring can erase that. 2014 is likely to be a year in which the nature of the conflict in Egypt changes from that of military versus Brotherhood into a non-elitist conflict that transcends all of this to become something else, perhaps a struggle that will recapture the spirit of the first revolution.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).