On December 17, 2010, Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi unknowingly initiated a series of protests, called as the Arab Spring, which quickly spread throughout the Middle East
Protests during the Arab Spring with the flags of the states involved
The Arab Spring began in late 2010 when a 26-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the town hall in the city of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, after police prevented him from setting up a fruit and vegetable stall and seized his produce. This act of personal and desperate protest was the start of a movement that began in Tunisia and spread across the Middle East and North Africa, called the Arab Spring, and which sparked a wave of mass pro-democracy protests and demonstrations.
THE ORIGIN OF DISCOMFORT IN TUNISIA
From 1987 to 2011 Tunisia was ruled by authoritarian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, with a mandate characterized by rising unemployment, corruption already seen in his previous terms and a worsening economic situation. After the immolation of Muhamed Bouazizi on Friday, December 17, 2010 to denounce administrative abuses, social unrest began with young people shouting anti-government slogans, throwing Molotov cocktails and clashing with the police with stones. The places that received the most damage from demonstrators during the protests were bank branches, the headquarters of government agencies and police stations.
Tunisians at the protests held during the Arab Spring
On December 28, 2010, Ben Ali criticized the protests against him, claimed that they were Islamic extremists and blamed the Western media for spreading defamatory and false information, and also for provoking civil disobedience. After several weeks of heavy clashes by protesters against the police and a declaration of a state of emergency in between, Ben Ali resigned from the Tunisian presidency on January 14, 2011, fleeing to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and leaving power to Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, who in turn was replaced the next day by the Speaker of Parliament, Fouad Mebazaa.
THE START OF PROTESTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES
Ben Ali's departure from power broke the image of immobility of governments and gave hope for change to the population, who took to the streets to demand the resignation of their leaders or at least changes that would lead to an improvement in their quality of life, thanks to the ease of organization provided by the rise of social networks in those years.
This feeling was reinforced in Egypt, where citizens began protests on January 25, 2011, dubbed the Day of Anger. The demonstrations and riots originated as a protest against excessive police brutality, high unemployment rates, the desire to increase the minimum wage, lack of housing and food, inflation, corruption or lack of freedom of opinion. The main goal of the protesters was to force out President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for almost 30 years. After 18 days of protests, on Friday, February 11, Mubarak finally resigned.
Egypt's streets flooded with people during the Arab Spring
As a result, countries such as Syria, Libya and Yemen were plunged into wars which, in the case of the second one, led to direct international involvement, resulting in the capture and execution of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in October 2011. In Syria, faced with the poverty of the population and little hope for the future, they took to the streets to demand the resignation of their leader, Bashar Al Assad, after 15 years in power. In Yemen, demonstrators demanded that Ali Abdullah Saleh, dictator of the unified country since 1990 and of the north since 1978, should not stand for re-election. Yemenis compared their president to the ousted Tunisian ex-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, because of the corruption of his government and Yemen's poor economy.
Bahrain was another country where protests were of particular importance, led by Shiites denouncing discrimination at the hands of the ruling Sunni dynasty, protests supported by sectors of the Sunni community, but crushed by the authorities with support from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Arab Spring was echoed in Morocco, Lebanon, Algeria, Mauritania, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but in these cases the authorities were able to weather them with cosmetic reforms and promises of an improvement in the quality of life and a greater fight against corruption.
LAS SECUELAS DE LAS PROTESTAS
Following the Arab Spring demonstrations, Syria plunged into civil war. Its situation was made even more complex by the many international interests involved, which caused the conflict resulting from the repression by Bashar al Assad's forces to become internationalized and is still active today, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and millions of refugees and displaced persons, most of them residing in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon.
A guard sits on the rubble of a house after air strikes destroyed it Sana, capital of Yemen
The situation in Yemen, already the poorest country in the region before the outbreak of war in 2014, is even more alarming because of the humanitarian crisis in which it is mired and the ongoing fighting between the Saudi-led coalition backing Hadi and the Iranian-backed Houthis. The latter are being a major player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, attacking the ships of the Hebrew State transiting the Red Sea.
WHAT THE ARAB SPRING MEANT
The Arab Spring brought about political and social changes, including geostrategic ones, which have developed over the past thirteen years: the resurgence of the "cold war" between Saudi Arabia and Iran, following the civil war in Yemen and the repression of the Shiites in Bahrain; the chaos in Libya and its sequel of migration crisis; the largest exodus of refugees of the 21st century triggered by the war in Syria; the prominence of countries such as Turkey or the United Arab Emirates in scenarios as far away as North Africa, the conflict between Israel and Palestine or the return of Russia to the Mediterranean chessboard.
New ways of citizen protest are also heirs to Tunisian or Egyptian activism, such as the use of social media or the occupation of public space. Now it seems normal to us, but in 2010 young Arabs were the first to use social media as a way to self-organize in the street. In the region it was unheard of for them to occupy squares and public spaces permanently and peacefully, as happened in Cairo's Tahrir Square, something that was later copied by the Spanish 15-M or Occupy Wall Street in the United States.
The reappropriation of national symbols, such as the flag; slogans against corruption and for dignity; or the creation of new and unexpected protest icons have been other resources imitated in places as far away from Arab countries as Hong Kong or Thailand.
In Europe, these events were celebrated as the struggle of Arab youth for freedom, democracy and self-determination. However, the hope that this would be a political turning point was dashed, because only in Tunisia was regime change and a lasting democratization process started, and even in some countries they are worse off now than before the Arab Spring.
Another lesson from the Arab Spring was that mobilizations could bring about changes in their governments, which has subsequently been replicated in Algeria and Sudan, where Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Omar Hasan al-Bashir, respectively, fell in 2019 in the face of pressure from the streets. Protests in Algeria erupted in 2019 over plans by Bouteflika, who was impaired after suffering a stroke in 2013, to run for a fifth term and ended with his resignation and the holding of presidential elections in December, in which Abdelmayid Tebune won amid low turnout.
Algerian demonstrators at a protest in Algiers, capital of Algeria, in 2019
The Middle East and North Africa are currently the world's largest conflict zone, where instability and uncertainty reign. Its population is growing by leaps and bounds, unemployment is high and economic prospects are poor. Politically, authoritarian states and repressive systems continue to dominate, especially the military regime in Egypt and the Gulf monarchies, which have led the counter-revolution everywhere.
These countries are some examples of the fall of the so-called "wall of fear" in the face of autocratic regimes and the resurgence of popular protests after several years of silence, caused in part by the descent into chaos in Syria, Yemen and Libya, something used by some rulers as a justification for repressing demonstrations on the grounds of maintaining stability.
Comments