ARAB SPRING

Arab Spring



Arab Spring

Beginning in late January 2011, hundreds of thousands of Egyptian citizens took to the streets to protest the continued leadership of Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt for nearly thirty years. Some view the protests as the culmination of thirty years of ongoing oppression in Egypt; others point to growing unrest throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and suggest that the situation in Egypt is just part of a greater revolution taking place across the Arab world. In a stunning announcement on 11 February 2011, Omar Suleiman, President Mubaraks vice president and longtime chief of intelligence, announced that Mr. Mubarak had resigned from office, passing all authority to a council of military leaders. Twitter alerted citizens to protests that were happening in real time at Tahrir Square and warned people about military strikes, snipers, and dangerous areas to avoid. Facebook was also used to disseminate information about government atrocities and marshal support against the regime.

[Tahrir Square during Arab Spring]

In December 2010, protesters in Tunisia took to the streets to demonstrate Ithe lack of political freedom and economic opportunity in their country under President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali (1936-), who had ruled the North African nation since 1987. Like the leaders of many Arab nations, Ben Ali ran an authoritarian regime that jailed political opponents, controlled the media, tolerated corruption, and repressed personal freedoms, often with brutality. (An authoritarian regime is a type of leadership in which power is consolidated under one powerful leader, or a small cluster of elite leaders, who do not answer to the will of the people.) A street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi (1984-2011), set himself on fire in the city of Sidi Bouzid outside of a government office on December 17, in a desperate act of defiance against constant harassment by local police. Bouazizi's supporters staged a peaceful protest that turned into a riot. Additional anti-government demonstrations quickly gained momentum in other cities, as people fed up with living under repression and fear, and enabled by social networking technology, demanded change. By the following month, Ben Ali had stepped down from power. (Sabra, 2012)

Beginning in late January 2011, hundreds of thousands of Egyptian citizens took to the streets to protest the continued leadership of Hosni Mubarak, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt for nearly thirty years. Some view the protests as the culmination of thirty years of ongoing oppression in Egypt; others point to growing unrest throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and suggest that the situation in Egypt is just part of a greater revolution taking place across the Arab world. In a stunning announcement on 11 February 2011, Omar Suleiman, President Mubaraks vice president and longtime chief of intelligence, announced that Mr. Mubarak had resigned from office, passing all authority to a council of military leaders.

Almost immediately, a similar but larger-scale scene played out in Egypt, where weeks of protests centered in Cairo's Tahrir Square led to the February 2011 ouster of President Hosni Mubarak ...