How to stop North Africa becoming the new terror front

The Arab Spring was a “formidable event,” orchestrated by “free revolutionaries.”  The popular ousting of the “remaining tyrants in the region was inevitable.” Efforts must be made “to educate and warn Muslim people about half-solutions” spread by the Muslim Brotherhood.

These are the words of Osama bin Laden, indeed - some of the last he wrote before his rude awakening from the US government. He’s referring to the revolutionary movement that has swept the Maghreb region of North Africa, sparked by the self immolation of Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi.

Certainly, the Arab Spring will come to be seen as one of the defining events of the 2010s, and while it has been welcomed with almost delirious excitement from the Middle East and liberal West, the events playing out in these states may yet have disastrous ramifications.

The region is in flux. The leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and - most dramatically - Libya have been deposed, and the resulting power vacuums have opened the path to free and fair elections for the first time in decades.

Bur transparent democracy is not so easily won. The restructuring of these states is a giant task, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has been horribly revealed by recent events in Algeria. At the In Amenas oil facility, militants -  seemingly under the command of former al-Quaeda commander, Mokhtar Belmokhtar  - have been responsible for the deaths of at least 38 workers, provoking international outrage and re-energising what many Muslims see as an international jihad - a holy war.

So how do you stop the powder keg from exploding?

Often, Westerners struggle to comprehend the nature of Arab statehood. Many national boundaries were disparate and undefined until Europeans drew them onto maps, often in straight lines. This is important because to many natives of the Maghreb, Western intervention in their homeland appears absolutely inescapable; fundamental, even.

Actually, such a complex heritage has often played into the hands of the despot, who requires a public hungry for nationalism, and accustomed to (if not necessarily tolerant of)  a sustained and visible military presence.

Therefore, what you need to smooth over the transition are highly charismatic local leaders intent on reconciliation and democracy - much like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or Václav Havel in the Czech Republic. These are leaders who ushered in an atmosphere of forgiveness and tolerance despite suffering harshly under the old regimes.

Will such leaders manage to come to the fore? I certainly hope so. If not, it’s likely that by hook or by crook, leaders will come to power who are perceived locally as puppets of the West, such as Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, or Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq. The positive effects of these leaders tends to be fairly superficial - Iraq and Afghanistan continue to foster violent militant insurgencies, and regardless of US military withdrawal, the battles are far from over.

So is Osama bin Laden right to be so positive about the Arab Spring? Certainly the motivations behind his words were vastly different from ours, but unavoidable result of the new landscape will be 'half-solutions'. They may be the only option on the table.