The recent political and military turmoil in the region is following a predictable pattern, which starts with so-called activism and ends with military intervention to topple sovereign governments. 

 

Following is a brief scenario of the chain of the events:

 

“A” phase: The pseudo-prodemocracy movement builds up steam and starts to develop. This development is either in the streets or in the media or both. The participants in the movement in this phase are called “activists” and the media starts to call the target government a “regime”.

 

“R” phase: After weeks and months of trying soft techniques to topple the government, the main approach is escalated to the militaristic stage and those once called “activists” are now called “rebels”. They usually receive assistance from regional military channels. The targeted government starts to react militarily, and the media starts labeling it a “brutal regime” or some other similar tag.

 

Second “A” phase: The usually decentralized rebel-guerrilla style movement upgrades to the “army” level. The “new army” receives intelligence and military support from extra-regional powers and/or their proxies, a massive amount of disinformation is disseminated, and military personnel are encouraged to defect or join the new army. The media starts comparing the opposition army to the conventional state army.

 

Second “R” phase: If the opposition army fails to topple the government by itself, plan B is put into effect, in which the media pushes the need for international intervention and the NATO/UN Security Council “raid” starts.

 

This ARAR formula -- Activism/Rebelism/Army building/Multilateral Raid -- was first implemented in Libya and is now in its final stages in Syria. The main players behind the game are the media -- in this case, Qatari and Saudi media outlets in cooperation with Western media outlets -- extra-regional powers such as the United States and Britain and their European allies, and finally, regional proxies such as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. 

 

The key to foil the plan is both hard and simple: know the phase, inform public opinion about it, build up a coalition, discredit biased media outlets, cut and weaken regional procurement and logistics channels, balance the power, and “resist”.