The Arab Spring, a decade later  

A decade ago, the streets of Egypt were filled with protesters demanding the fall of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Inspired by the success of the protests in Tunisia a few weeks earlier, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took over Cairo's Tahrir Square and camped out there, organised through social media. The chants, banners and police abuses were photographed, filmed and broadcast around the world at full speed. The movement not only spread throughout most of the Arab world; it also reached southern Europe and even the United States. Three years after the severe economic crisis of 2008, it seemed that a wave of popular movements was about to shake the world. Western media celebrated the liberating potential of social media, which allowed ordinary people to express their ideas freely, evade the censorship of authoritarian regimes and organise to demand change.  

Ten years on, the somewhat naïve optimism of Western media and analysts has faded. Social networks no longer seem an ideal forum for organising protests and disseminating images and texts banned by dictatorships, but a well of disinformation, polarisation and foreign interference. Demonstrations and encampments in Arab countries, which a decade ago occupied front pages and headlines, have been relegated to the background. Democracy is no longer a priority for many self-proclaimed experts on the Arab region: with the rise of various Islamist movements with some popular support and the decay of countries such as Libya and Syria, stability - even if it means dictatorships that violate human rights - is now the main concern. 

Beyond the evolving position of the Western media, the situation has indeed changed profoundly in most North African and Middle Eastern countries. Although the 2011 protests took many Western journalists and academics by surprise, they did not come out of the blue: Tunisia and Egypt had already experienced massive demonstrations and strikes by unemployed and industrial workers, respectively, in 2008. However, 2011 marked a turning point in Arab politics, both for opposition movements and ruling regimes. In general, two waves of demonstrations can be distinguished: an initial one between 2011 and 2014 and another between 2018 and 2021, the latter in countries that barely experienced the first.  

From West to East, almost all countries in the region have experienced some form of mass protest in the last ten years. In Morocco, the Rifian Hirak of 2016-17 - which demanded, among other things, an end to corruption and greater health investment - resulted in thousands of arrests and many young people fleeing repression to the Iberian Peninsula and the Canary Islands. In Algeria, the 2019 'revolution of smiles' achieved its goal of preventing the ageing Bouteflika from running for re-election. The army still clings to power - through constitutional reform - but civil society, including an emerging feminist movement, has organised itself and will hopefully keep its finger on the pulse of the military regime. Tunisia, the country where the 'Arab spring' began, is the Maghreb state that has undergone the most changes in the last decade. The transition to democracy can be described as relatively successful, although large parts of the population - especially in the mining region of the southwest - remain deeply dissatisfied with living conditions and protests are recurrent. 

Libya is perhaps one of the saddest stories of the last ten years. NATO countries, led by France, decided to support what appeared to be a popular movement against Gaddafi's brutal regime. Western military intervention, however, only succeeded in plunging the country into a long civil war that shows no signs of ending soon and has caused great suffering for both Libyans and tens of thousands of migrants transiting the country. Meanwhile, Egypt, the symbolic epicentre of the Arab spring, has remained in the hands of the military. The 2011 protests brought down Mubarak, but after the Islamist Morsi won the post-revolutionary elections, the military staged a coup that placed Marshal Al-Sisi in the presidency. Sudan, where the 2011 movement had little impact, experienced a very large popular movement in 2018 that encouraged part of the army to organise a coup against dictator Omar al-Bashir. Sudanese protesters, however, have learned the lessons of Egypt: instead of a rapid transition, they have demanded progressive democratisation to ensure judicial independence and fair elections.  

In the Levant, Palestine has seen protests and mobilisations, although most of these - such as the great March of Return in 2018 - have been directed against the Israeli occupation. Hamas remains in control of the Gaza Strip and Fatah holds power in the West Bank without legislative elections since 2006. The next elections are scheduled for 2021, but given the history of postponements and cancellations of local elections in the West Bank - in Gaza, Hamas systematically boycotts voting - they may not take place. Lebanon, meanwhile, has been the scene of numerous demonstrations over the past two years. The 'Lebanese revolution' began in autumn 2019 and continues today with sporadic protests in the country's major cities. The movement, mainly made up of secular-leaning youth from all religious communities, is demanding an end to corruption and sectarian patronage in a country hard hit by the economic crisis and the devaluation of the lira, environmental problems, the coronavirus and the massive explosion that ripped through Beirut in summer 2020. Jordan has also experienced protests and a general strike in 2018, although the intensity has generally been lower than in neighbouring countries.   

Syria has been mired in a bloody civil war for ten years. The 2011 protests, which originated in the city of Daraa, have evolved into a confrontation too complex to be summarised in a few lines. Five and a half million Syrians - more than a quarter of the population - have fled the country since 2011. Iraq, another war-torn country until 2017, has experienced an intense cycle of protests over the past year and a half. Most of the actions have been centred in the capital, in the south of the country, although there has also been a discreet support in the rest of the country. Protesters are demanding better economic conditions and an end to corruption, but also an end to foreign interference in the country and a check on the arbitrary nature of sectarian militias - some affiliated with Iran - that led the fight against Daesh and were integrated into the country's security forces. The protests led to the resignation of Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi, but the country remains in a political deadlock.  

Finally, the Gulf monarchies have been able to efficiently suppress the little opposition and resist political change. In 2011 the various Gulf Cooperation Council countries coordinated their forces to suppress protest movements, which were particularly large in Bahrain. The Manama Pearl Roundabout, the gathering place of Bahraini protesters, was symbolically demolished by the Bahraini authorities in March 2011. Since then, numerous activists have been imprisoned in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, many of them accused of being foreign agents. Similarly, Qatar and the UAE have deported many of the leaders of the foreign temporary workers' strike movements, most of them from South Asia. GCC countries have also become involved in the Yemeni civil war, a conflict that began in 2014 and has caused more than a quarter of a million civilian casualties and three million displaced persons.  

While this brief summary fails to do justice to the complexity of the social tensions and conflicts that Arab countries are experiencing, it is important to note that the process of change that began in 2011 has not yet come to an end. The nature of political regimes and opposition movements in each country is different, and to represent it as a simple struggle between pro-democratic elements and authoritarian leaders clinging to power would be to oversimplify. It is true, however, that the Arab region is characterised by undemocratic governments - whether monarchies or military regimes - and repressive practices, as well as striking social inequality. According to the World Inequality Lab, the Middle East is the region of the world where the gap between rich and poor is the widest, with the richest 10 per cent controlling more than 64 per cent of total resources. This gap, coupled with periods of scarcity related to global economic flows, is often the trigger for protest movements, as was the case in Sudan in 2018. The lack of future prospects for the young population, rampant corruption and the lack of escape valves in the form of civil society or political participation is the perfect combination for social outbursts to occur. 

Economic injustice and the absence of democratic mechanisms are not the only factors to be taken into account. The role of Islamists, which we have barely addressed in previous paragraphs, is contradictory - after all, political Islam, as Western analysts call groups that try to mobilise the population using religious discourse, is not a unified force, and there are numerous external actors that try to instrumentalise them for their own ends, often in contradiction with their own internal politics. Similarly, sectarianism has been used by many of the region's regimes as a way of dividing potential opposition and rallying their citizens against a perceived internal or external enemy. Finally, the influence of global powers - the US, Russia, China - and regional powers - Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar - is an important element in analysing political mobilisations and crises, although protesters should not be understood as mere puppets manipulated by external actors.  

In general, it could be said that the social movements have learned the lessons of the first revolutionary wave: their strategies are more measured and slower and their demands a little more concrete, although there is no solid organisation beyond the various Islamist groups. Falling governments, which was enough for the 2011 protesters, has not satisfied the Iraqi, Yemeni, Algerian or Sudanese opponents of the second wave. Regimes, no doubt, have also learned their lesson: instead of a violent and disproportionate response as in Syria in 2011, they now resort to targeted arrests, disinformation and calculated violence.   

A decade after the fall of Mubarak, the Arab world is still dominated by the absence of democracy, social inequalities and, sadly, bloody civil wars that did not exist ten years ago. However, there have also been hopeful changes in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria and Sudan. As 2020 has made clear, it is foolhardy to make predictions about the future, but I think it is safe to say that in the next decade we will continue to see organised demonstrations and political changes in the region. Although it will take time to bear fruit, the Arab spring is not over yet.