WHATEVER happened to the Arab Spring? It seems ages since all those social media savvy secular youngsters, intoxicated by popular notions of “democracy,” orchestrated revolutions across North Africa and were cheered on by The Guardian, The Independent and The New York Times.

To misquote William Wordsworth: “Bliss was it that dawn to be alive and to report for the BBC was very heaven.”

A few people, including this columnist, warned that the western media’s enthusiasm for the uprisings was naive and misplaced and that the only groups who would gain from the overthrow of the old demagogues were the extreme Islamists. And this is exactly what has happened.

Last week, the distinguished Middle Eastern correspondent Raymond Stock wrote: “In those countries, the only groups large enough, or at least sufficiently funded and organized to form a viable opposition, were the Islamists.”

In Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria there is widespread public resistance to the Muslim fundamentalists. Most citizens of these states have no appetite for Sharia law, for the mistreatment and subjugation of women and for the Islamists’ attempts to exterminate Christians.

Tunisia is in the grip of the Islamists and so is Libya, which Britain, through a combined bombing campaign, helped to “liberate”.

Libya is now so liberated that the British government recently declared Benghazi a no-go area for our people.

Western governments’, including our own, insane support for the revolutionary Muslims continues.

Syria is a blood bath with more than 100,000 slaughtered. Still, William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, strongly advocates the arming of the rebels. When Vladimir Putin visited London recently for talks with David Cameron, he asked a pertinent question: “These people murder their opponents, cut them open, remove their livers and eat them. Are these the sorts of men you seek to supply with arms, Mr Prime Minister?”

Now in Syria and Egypt there is the violent and bloody suppression of the Islamists – mainly Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists – by forces supported by the great majority.

Egypt is a noble civilization stretching back more than 10,000 years. The people have no desire to see an extreme form of Islam imposed upon them under the cloak of the fabled Arab Spring The people never wanted the appalling totalitarianism of extreme Islam – and that’s why, for instance, the Muslim Brotherhood has been an organisation banned in Egypt since the 1950s. Saudi Arabia, the most powerful of the Arab nations, has come out firmly on the side of the Egyptian interim government and army against the Islamic fundamentalists, for the Saudis have no wish to be driven down that road to hell.

So what will happen next? Everywhere is so volatile as the rage and violence gets worse by the week. The most likely outcome is a long and terrible civil conflict with no side able to achieve supremacy. President Assad, backed by Russia which enjoys a port in Syria, will probably survive.

The army in Egypt is looking to emasculate the Islamists. The wild card, promising a frightening escalation into all-out war, is Iran. And in this we see the re-emergence of the 1,000-year conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Beside which, the Arab Spring is a pinprick.