In Tunisia this week, there was a bleak, if symbolic, convergence. Not long after authorities arrested the country's leading opposition leader as part of a widening crackdown on dissent, Tunisia's increasingly autocratic president, Kais Saied, hosted Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad for a three-day visit aimed at restoring ties with Damascus.

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is reaping the rewards of a steady process of normalization among its Arab neighbors, which follows years of isolation provoked by the hideous campaigns of violence Assad unleashed on his own country in a decade-long civil war. With the conflict at a low ebb and Assad firmly in control, countries like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have already mended fences with Assad's regime. In a major move, Saudi Arabia signaled last week after hosting Mekdad in the city of Jiddah that it was ready to follow suit. On Wednesday, Assad greeted Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud in Damascus, the first visit of a top diplomat from Riyadh since Syria's rebellion escalated into full-blown conflict.

But Tunisia was supposed to be different. At the vanguard of the so-called Arab Spring - pro-democracy uprisings that flared across the Arab world in 2011 - it was among the first countries to break ties with Assad, a despot who embodied the region's entrenched, if decaying, authoritarian order. Tunisian protesters had forced their own long-ruling strongman out of power, inspiring Arab brethren elsewhere to clamor for change in their societies.

Saied, though, has brought a decade of fitful democratic consolidation to a shuddering halt. The detention this week of Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the country's main moderate Islamist party, came after the arrest of other civil society activists and opposition figures. It marked a grim inflection point: Before the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, Ghannouchi had spent years in prison and decades in exile. He was a polarizing figure after his return to the county. But he remained an emblem of the possibility of political pluralism in Tunisia, a rarity for a region more familiar with the stifling of those aspirations.

Now, Saied's Tunisia seems a stepchild of the bad old order, the latest iteration of what Nadim Houry, executive director of the Paris-based Arab Reform Initiative, described as an "authoritarian restoration" that got underway in the years after the Arab Spring. Saied is pushing through a "striking process of detransition" from democracy, Houry told me. But the Tunisian president, whose critics accuse him of carrying out a de facto coup in 2021 when he dissolved parliament, is hardly alone.

In 2019, anti-government protests flared across the Arab world, from Algeria to Sudan to Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. They were fueled by anger over endemic corruption, stagnant economies and failing, feckless political elites. In some countries, heads of state or government stepped down, cowed by the demonstrations. There "was hope that they would move toward more inclusive democracies," Houry said. "That didn't happen."

See the chaotic battles this week in Sudan, which burst whatever wisp of an illusion remained that the generals running Khartoum's transitional regime cared about building a solid, inclusive democracy after jettisoning a fragile civilian government in 2021. Hundreds of civilians have been killed or wounded in the crossfire between feuding factions, each eager to expand and consolidate their fiefdoms.

Various Arab states, especially Gulf monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have helped sponsor the anti-democratic backlash. It's a sign both of enduring interests - a fear of instability and spillover threats to their monopolies on power at home - as well as the shifting geopolitical sands of the region. Recent Saudi and Emirati moves to bury the hatchet with Iran paved the way for the current moves to bring Assad, a close ally of Tehran, from out of the cold.

"That Saudi Arabia would be spearheading efforts to return Syria to the Arab fold would have once seemed unthinkable," wrote my Washington Post colleague Sarah Dadouch. "For years, the kingdom was among the main suppliers of arms to rebel groups that fought to overthrow the government in Damascus. In 2015, then-Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said if a political process failed to remove Assad, Riyadh would continue to support the opposition 'to remove him by force.'"

But after a few years of aggressive actions, especially with a costly war effort in Yemen, Riyadh may be recalibrating. "I think the lesson [for Saudis] now is maybe actually it's better if we just focus on diplomacy; we don't need to demonstrate strength through military intervention," Andrew Leber, an assistant professor at Tulane University and expert on Saudi politics, said to Dadouch.

Washington's perceived disengagement with the region has also altered the calculus. "The enmity between the Iranian axis and the gulf stems in large part from a perception that the gulf is an essential pillar for the U.S. security order in the region," Mohammed Alyahya, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Post. "If there is no longer a commitment to that order by America, then it follows that a significant source of that enmity disappears."

Despite the West's supposed absence, "the West has not played a particularly positive role" for the region's democratic hopes, Houry said. In Sudan, the United States seemed more preoccupied in getting the country's generals on board with an agreement to normalize ties with Israel than guiding a genuine transition back to democracy. In Algeria and Tunisia, European governments prioritized access to natural gas and cooperation in stopping migrant flows, respectively, over helping support the aspirations of protesters and a mobilized, if embattled, civil society.

Indeed, the coercive threat of Arab autocracies even reaches into the West. A recent report by the Freedom Initiative, a nonprofit rights organization, found that Egypt and Saudi Arabia - U.S. allies - have deployed a whole tool kit of repression to intimidate and silence dissidents even on U.S. soil. "While U.S. politicians frequently voice outrage and impose consequences in response to such tactics on the part of adversaries such as China, Iran and Russia," explained my Post colleague Claire Parker, "policymakers have not meaningfully held Saudi Arabia and Egypt to account - including for behaviors that violate U.S. law and threaten national security."

Arrayed against this status quo, protesters and pro-democracy activists can't be faulted for feeling pessimistic. But the conditions for future upheaval are as present as ever. "On the surface, it may look like we are back to the future ... but the authoritarian restorations are on very thin ice," Houry told me, pointing to enduring economic dysfunction and frailty in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. "The broken social contracts which led to the Arab uprisings are even more exposed today."