Nicosia (AFP)
From organizing anti-government protests in Baghdad or Beirut to coordinating relief efforts in the heart of the conflict in Syria, free WhatsApp messaging has become an indispensable tool for connecting millions of people in the Arab world.
In Lebanon, where the price of telecommunications is among the highest in the region, the population uses WhatsApp massively to make calls online.
On October 17, the government announced a tax on these calls, triggering the wrath of the Lebanese. The country has since been paralyzed by an unprecedented mobilization against the political class.
Most protesters reject the term "WhatsApp revolution", seeing in its use a devaluation of their movement that aspires to radical political change.
But they recognize the importance of messaging for the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of people in a country of 6 million people.
For Yasmine Rifaii, 24, organizer of protests in Tripoli (north), WhatsApp serves as "virtual slide of the revolution".
"We are connected to all these WhatsApp groups. (...) Thus, we reach people, by (abolishing religious divisions) and distances," she says.
The use of WhatsApp can also be vital in conflict, as in neighboring Syria where civilians use it to make calls for help, says Mustafa al-Hajj Younes, who heads a team of first-aid workers in the province. 'Idleb (north-west).
"We coordinate our interventions through these groups," he adds. For him, WhatsApp is unavoidable in areas under the control of the opposition, because of the failure of telecommunications infrastructure: "People can only reach us via WhatsApp or on laptops".
- "The most dangerous application" -
With the expansion of messaging in the region, digital authoritarianism has gradually been implemented in some countries where governments routinely block apps like WhatsApp.
In the United Arab Emirates, users can make e-mail calls only through a proxy server to bypass their prohibition. Some users have even been imprisoned because of messages deemed offensive by the Emirati courts.
In Morocco, authorities blocked all networks allowing free calls in 2016. It was "a national tragedy", entrusted anonymously a journalist of 26 years who depended on the applicaton to contact its sources but also political leaders.
In Egypt, many people have recently been arrested on the sidelines of protests against power of limited scale because of their activities on social networks.
Police arrested random participants to search their cell phones and many of them were immediately arrested, AFP journalists said in September.
According to the Egyptian Attorney General, the police were ordered "to inspect the content of the accounts on the social networks and personal pages of the detainees".
In Iraq, where more than 200 people have been killed since the start of an unprecedented protest movement on 1 October, the authorities cut off the Internet to weaken anti-corruption mobilization.
"We consider WhatsApp to be the most dangerous application," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Blocking WhatsApp was necessary to prevent these gatherings," he admits.
For Yasser al-Joubouri, an Iraqi activist who took part in the first wave of protests in Baghdad between October 1 and 6, WhatsApp is (an app) crucial to spreading "information" quickly about events through groups and "broadcast on Facebook or Twitter".
- "Simplify things"
According to a poll by Northwestern University in Qatar, WhatsApp, which has 1.5 billion users worldwide, is the most popular social network in the Middle East, a young and connected region.
But the application is not only useful for the sharing of information or testimony in countries in conflict where protests protests: it also supplanted the phone for daily exchanges.
Jamila Sharaf, a mother of two in East Jerusalem, keeps herself informed about her children's schooling on a WhatsApp group set up by the school's management.
According to her, "the application simplifies things and makes it possible to disseminate information very quickly".
In Iran, the authorities have banned Telegram - encrypted messaging - because it serves, according to them, to fuel the unrest as in a wave of demonstrations in January 2018.
"The ban on Telegram forced me to use more WhatsApp," says Ramin, 26.
For this young Iranian, the idea of taxing social networks to offset budget deficits is "ridiculous".
"I would be (ready) to help my government but not by paying for an application supposed to be free."
© 2019 AFP