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Ten years ago, popular revolutions broke out, which no one expected to take place in the Arab world, and sparked dreams of freedom, before this snowball rolled into most places. countries to which it has moved and destroys many hopes.
The Middle East experienced a rapid collapse of regimes that seemed impossible to get rid of, before the Islamic State announced the creation of a “caliphate state” over vast areas of Syria and Iraq, and he quickly passed out after years, during which he caused terror in the world.
This political and geographic earthquake, which rocked the region from 2011, has been called the “Arab Spring”, and it has had mixed results.
The protests began in Tunisia, and their resonance has been heard in Libya, Egypt and Syria, where they have at times been held responsible for causing chaos and violence, but they remain in the hearts of those who have participated in a beautiful station, which sowed the seeds of hope for the realization of the dream of freedom, according to France Press.
The spirit of the revolution is not yet dead, which was evident after eight years of the outbreak of a second wave of popular uprisings in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Lina Munther, Lebanese author and translator whose family has Syrian and Egyptian roots, believes that something “in the very fabric of reality” has changed since the outbreak of the revolutions.
Sharara Tunisia
The spark of the “Arab Spring” began with a match, which the traveling vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set alight with his body, after pouring fuel into the wilaya of Sidi Bouzid to protest against the detention of his property by the authorities local on December 17, 2010.
This sparked unprecedented mass indignation. Although no camera has documented it, the news has spread widely on social media.
When Bouazizi died of his injury on January 4, the protest movement against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in power for 23 years, swept the country.
Ten days later, Ben Ali was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia.
Howayda Anwar is one of the dreamers at the time, although she was dating and was afraid to participate in the protests this January because she knew she was being pursued. Howayda was an online activist leading virtual chats that fueled the street protests.
“People thought that Ben Ali’s departure was going to make a difference, but it would take 20 or 30 years” to do so, says Howeida.
revenge
On the night of Ben Ali’s departure, videos showing lawyer Nasser Al-Oweini, delighted with the news of the president’s escape to the streets, regardless of the night curfew imposed at the time, flooded social networking sites. He shouted “Ben Ali has fled”.
The Habib Bourguiba street in the Tunisian capital was deserted, when Al-Oweini emerged in the middle of the street shouting: “O oppressed Tunisians, you deprived the Tunisians, Ben Ali fled, Ben Ali fled”.
The video was broadcast on news channels and some even adopted it as an introduction to talk shows about the Arab uprisings.
“For me, it was an 18-year vendetta during which I was harassed and jailed,” the leftist lawyer told AFP.
But Al-Oweini reveals that today he feels “frustrated”.
Ten years after the “Tunisian revolution” … the Bouazizi family in Canada and “curses follow him”
The desperation of young Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi continues to rock the Middle East, despite passing 10 years after his death after setting his body on fire, following a heated argument with the police over his goods and the vegetable cart in which he made a living, which triggered what has been called the “Arab Spring”.
In Tunisia, the only country among the Arab Spring countries to have succeeded in its democratic path, unemployment, marginalization and inflation, which are the issues that fueled the 2011 protests, remain unchanged, while the country’s political class is ravaged by intense political conflicts.
Al-Awaini added: “There is hope. I used to dream, but today I am realistic.”
During the month of Ben Ali’s departure, protests calling for freedom and democracy erupted in Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
When anger spread through the streets of Cairo, the region’s largest city and its historic political depth, the infection of the protests was dubbed the “Arab Spring”.
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Egypt to express their yearning for a democrat and to demand that Hosni Mubarak, who has been president since 1981, resign.
stupefaction
The unexpected happened on February 11, 2011, when Hosni Mubarak resigned.
“The night of Mubarak’s fall, I cried for joy. I couldn’t believe the extent of courage and beauty of the Egyptian people. It looked like the dawn of a new era, ”says Munther.
She adds: “Then came Syria. I was happy for Egypt and amazed about it, but I felt amazed and ecstatic about Syria.
Along with Ben Ali and Mubarak, the Arab Spring ousted Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and in the second wave, Omar al-Bashir in Sudan last year.
The total reign of these five reached 146 years, not counting Saleh’s reign as president of North Yemen for 12 years before the country’s unification in 1990.
“I still believe”
In Egypt, after three years of turmoil in the country, the military deposed the late Islamic President Mohamed Morsi in 2013, and his ruling successor was the regime of former army commander Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who pursues a repressive performance no less than that of Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown by the 2011 revolution, according to France. Hurry.
In Libya and Syria, and as far as Yemen, central authority weakened, but revolutions were followed by wars and bloody conflicts.
However, Majdi al-Libi, in his thirties, never regretted going out and protesting peacefully until the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Today, he says, the revolution “was important and I still believe in it.”
On February 15, 2011, Magdy was a student when the security forces opened fire on families demanding justice for people, notably imprisoned since 1996 in Tripoli and subjected to ill-treatment.
Magdy recalls that her country was “in shock” in “a number of cities” and that the popular protests were “spontaneous” and included “solidarity”.
“At the start of the uprising, the overthrow of the regime was not on the table … just demands for freedom, justice and more hope.”
Likewise, in Syria, says Dahnoun, the demands were “only reforms.” Dahnoun was 15 at the time and was still a high school student. And he saw the peaceful protests in his country turn into bloody massacres under the regime’s repression.
“Regime groups and security forces attacked us” in Idlib, in the northwest of the country, which is the only area today still outside the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, he said. told France Press.
In Bahrain, the only Gulf country to have witnessed popular protests, the uprising was violently suppressed with the support of Saudi Arabia, which anticipated the transmission of the infection to its soil by distributing huge cash aid to its inhabitants.
In Morocco, the 2011 “February 20 movement” was contained, with cosmetic reforms. The protests only reached Algeria in 2019.
External interventions
“We followed what was happening in Tunisia and Egypt … Then it was our turn. Change was inevitable,” says Magdy. But after all this time, “I don’t think we are really aware of the extent of the havoc the Gaddafi regime has inflicted on state foundations.”
Chaos and violence spread to Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, and jihadist groups took advantage of the deteriorating situation to infiltrate the country.
At the same time, as in Syria, the interventions of foreign countries in support of different parties in their struggle for power have been complicated, and the country has not experienced stability since.
The Syrian conflict has killed over 380,000 people and displaced millions of people. Russia and Iran have supported the Assad regime, while the Gulf states and Turkey have supported the opposition factions, and ISIS has sowed terror in the country for years.
Today, Dahnoun, a political science student, regrets that “the Syrians do not have a word” today. “It is the external forces that decide,” he adds bitterly. “Syria is no longer ours”.
Ten years later, Bashar al-Assad remains in power, alone among the leaders of the other countries of the “Arab Spring”.
The Syrian teacher, who introduced himself as Abu Hamza and lives in Daraa, the birthplace of the protests, considers that “things must change”, and the head of the family adds: “When he is hungry, fear disappears … change must happen “.
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