There is no guarantee that those who rise up will succeed simply because a mass uprising occurs in response to prolonged authoritarian rule. On the contrary, during the period when such popular uprisings erupted one after another across the Middle East (the Arab Spring), at least three countries—Syria, Libya, and Yemen—slid into prolonged civil wars.

And in the countries where the overthrow of authoritarian rulers did succeed (Tunisia and Egypt), those societies went through prolonged periods of instability. An autocratic regime, in order to ensure its hold on power, dismantles all state institutions; as a result, in the absence of the autocrat, those institutions do not function in any meaningful way.
In such a context, the most urgent task of the forces behind an uprising—however difficult—is to prevent internal conflicts from escalating to a dangerous level, and in particular to avoid ideological divisions among themselves as much as possible.

In a democratic system, differences in thinking, programmes, and ideology among democratic parties are inevitable, and they may lead not only to debate but also to disputes and quarrels. But when parties and forces become hostile toward one another, it creates a threat to democracy.
And in an almost collapsed state apparatus in the aftermath of a mass uprising, such tendencies can become a cause of grave danger—one that can even create the risk of civil war and place the country’s independence and sovereignty under threat.