decades-old fascist and totalitarian regimes in the Arab world, and likened them to a long-drawn autumn. He said that the revolutions were against authoritarian regimes and were aimed at ushering in Human Rights but their directions varied in different countries.
According to Amin, the Arab Spring was still unfolding and one could not jump to sweeping generalisations. He highlighted how strategic interests of the states acted as a pivot around which policy-making revolved.
“Though the Western world has increasingly stressed democracy, rule of law and justice, yet Gaddafi and Hosni Mobarak were both autocrats and close allies of the Europeans,” he said. “Except for Tunisia, the Arab Spring underwent a dramatic reversal, such as in Egypt where democratically elected president had been ousted and military General Sisi was installed. It was ‘Mobarakism’ but without Mobarak.”
Dr Tanweer Khalid, the former chairperson of the department of political science spoke on the challenges and successes of EU in bringing political and economic stability in the Middle East.
She stressed upon a need for the EU to grow out of the conventional donor-recipient relationship with respect to the Arab world and instead devise a comprehensive strategy regarding its Arab neighbourhood.
Munazza Nargis Kazmi, a senior research fellow at the centre, discussed the EU’s renewed neighbourhood policy in response to the Arab Spring and its contextual ramifications. She touched upon EU’s Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), launched as a project, called ‘Wider Europe” in 2003. The EU, she said, reformulated the EU conditionality, of ‘more for more’.
In response to the rising tide of irregular migrants from neighbours to Europe, the Commission had asked the member states to relocate the migrants in the all EU states, but so far consensus had not been reached.
In March 2015, the EU launched a consultation on the future of the European Neighbourhood Policy to address the economic and migrant issues and to redress policy flaws and inconsistencies which could pose a question mark on EU’s credibility.
Tracing the historical context, Muhammad Moiz Khan, an assistant professor at the department of general, history referred to the multi-ethnic make-up of the Syrian society. He reiterated that although Bashar-al Assad was a common enemy of both the EU and the IS, Europe was in a fix about how to respond to the IS, despite sharing animosity towards Assad’s dictatorial regime. So, he said, it was a question of choosing the “lesser evil”.