Mohammed Al-Shaikh/Agence France-Presse â Getty Images  People protested Bahrainâs government on Wednesday behind barbed wire placed by the police.  BEIRUT, Lebanon â In Libya, armed militias have filled a void left by a revolution that felled a dictator. In Syria, a popular uprising has morphed into a civil war that has left more than 100,000 dead and provided a haven for Islamic extremists. In Tunisia, increasingly bitter political divisions have delayed the drafting of a new constitution.  And now in Egypt, often considered the trendsetter of the Arab world, the army and security forces, after having toppled the elected Islamist president, have killed hundreds of his supporters, declared a state of emergency and worsened a deep polarization.  It is clear that the regionâs old status quo, dominated by imperious rulers who fixed elections, ruled by fiat and quashed dissent, has been fundamentally damaged, if not overthrown, in the three years since the outbreak of the uprisings optimistically known as the Arab Spring. That was amply illustrated on Wednesday in Egypt, where a reversion to the repressive tactics of the past was met with deep outrage by Islamist protesters who had tasted empowerment.  What is unclear, however, is the replacement model. Most of the uprisings have devolved into bitter struggles, as a mix of political powers battle over the rules of participation, the relationship between the military and the government, the role of religion in public life and what it means to be a citizen, not a subject.  Middle East historians and analysts say that the political and economic stagnation under decades of autocratic rule that led to the uprisings also left Arab countries ill equipped to build new governments and civil society. While some of the movements achieved their initial goals, removing longtime leaders in four countries, their wider aims â democracy, dignity, human rights, social equality and economic security â now appear more distant than ever.  âThe old regional order has gone, the new regional order is being drawn in blood, and it is going to take a long time,â said Sarkis Naoum, a political analyst at Lebanonâs An Nahar newspaper.  âAll the people in those countries lived under similar suppression despite the differences in their regimes, so the uprisings were contagious,â Mr. Naoum said. âBut nobody in Syria, Libya, Egypt or Tunisia who wanted to get rid of the regime was prepared for what came next.â  In many ways, the Arab Spring has revealed and exacerbated deep societal splits, between secularists and Islamists and between different religious sects.  âThis is political polarization on steroids,â said Jeffrey Martini, a Middle East specialist at the RAND Corporation. âYouâve got both sides trying to banish each other from politics.â  In Tunisia, the birthplace of the uprisings, the moderate Islamist party now in power has been unable to build sufficient consensus to draft a new constitution, and opposition leaders have been assassinated. And in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, overwhelming force by the ruling Sunni monarchy has failed to silence dissent by the countryâs Shiite majority.  Political exclusion has also afflicted Egyptâs transition. After winning post-revolutionary elections, Mohamed Morsi, the now-deposed president, and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood faced fierce opposition from those who accused them of perverting democracy as a way of monopolizing power.  Throughout the region, the upheavals have so far failed to address the demands of millions of ordinary citizens who had clamored for change â for jobs, food, health care and basic human dignity. If anything, their grievances have worsened.  âMost Middle East economies buffeted by the Arab Spring were already going in the wrong direction,â said Joshua M. Landis, director of the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Economic distress caused by swelling youth populations, joblessness, rising prices and drought, he said, had done as much to cause the uprisings as political oppression.  Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut.  This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:  An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a constitutional expert based in Cairo who said it had now become normal for citizens of Arab Spring countries to insult their rulers. He is Zaid al-Ali, not Ziad.
The violence in Egypt has underscored how the Arab Spring revolutions have devolved into bitter political power struggles among competing groups.