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From December 2010 up until present day,
the Arab World as a whole has gone
through some very turbulent times. A
community that has seen little more than
absolute monarchies, and military regimes
which behaved as the aforementioned, was
simply fed up with their misery and decided
to do something about it. But they had no
plan other than to depose their respective
heads of state. Up to date, what was
dubbed as the ‘Arab Spring’ has lead to the
removal of the heads of State of Tunisia,
Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen; other
varying degrees of unrest have affected
nearly all of the remaining Arab countries.
The reason why these “revolutions” are
referred to under the collective umbrella
term “the Arab Spring” is that they were all
sparked by similar reasons (and with the
success of each one, the rest were
encouraged). High rates of poverty,
corruption, inflation, cost of living, and
similar factors contributed to an evergrowing lower class population against a
rapidly diminishing middle class. The scene
in the Arab World is very far from the heavy
stereotype that is found across the world;
the image of rich Arab businessmen with a
fleet of luxury cars and a stable full of purebred horses and camels is but a tiny
demographic of the Arab World.
It started off in Tunisia in December 2010,
when a particular young street vendor
(Mohammed Bouazizi) was abused and
humiliated by a police officer, who was
allegedly looking for a bribe that the vendor
could not afford. The incident was too
humiliating for the young man and unable
to turn to the police for help, he literally set
himself on fire. As an individual event it
might not have seemed like such a major
thing, but the masses, fed up with all their
hardships, took inspiration from it. Protests
broke out, and Ben Ali (Tunisian President)
failed to control or contain them. With the
military leaders refusing to be part of the
chaos, Ben Ali found little choice but to
escape the country, seeking and being
granted asylum in Saudi Arabia.
The surprising success of the Tunisian
revolution inspired many others. Most
significantly Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and
Bahrain, broke out into mass protests.
While the Yemeni protestors achieved their
aim of removing of their respective
president (although he managed to gain full
immunity from prosecution) in a largely
peaceful manner the same cannot be said
of the remaining protests. Libya’s Gaddafi
was in no mood to give up power, and had
numerous mercenaries at his disposal in
addition to his army, and he had no issue
with unleashing his arsenal at the masses.
What’s Right and What’s Left
By Omer Tahir
This was a perfect chance of western
powers (powers that have always sided
with these regimes, but are now suddenly
pro-Arab Spring) to allow NATO to enforce
a no-fly zone, which was little more than an
excuse for military action. Gaddafi’s power
over his country gradually faded and a few
weeks later he was assassinated.
Bahrain is a Shia majority country that is
being ruled by a Sunni monarchy. The
Shias, who claim to be religiously
discriminated and to be locked below a
glass ceiling, also went out in protest, with
many of them going as far as demanding
the installment of a Shia theocracy. This,
how