An article in the French newspaper Liberation says that in January 2011, Tunisians opened for the Arab world a party of revolutions carried out by young people eager for freedom, but after a decade, stormy transformations and other forms of fierce oppression by the existing forces closed the arc of democracy. And rebuilding the wall of fear again.

The story of the Arab Spring began one evening, when Tunisians tweeted that the dictator had fled like a thief after 23 years in power and after many days of conflict across Tunisia.

According to the article, Tunisia that evening, January 14, 2011, was not alone in seeing itself in another era.

Rather, all the Arab peoples suddenly discovered that the unimaginable overthrow of the despotic, predatory powers that had dominated them for decades could be done with a peaceful popular uprising. The wall of fear collapsed and a street of hope opened.

The slogan "Leave" and


in the article published by the French "Liberation", Hala Kadamani recalled the memories of the Arab Spring, and said that the slogan "The people want to overthrow the regime" that was launched from the Tunisian south echoed quickly before the end of January throughout the Arab world And the same demands were raised for freedom and social justice everywhere.

The Egyptians took to the streets, occupied the huge Tahrir Square (central Cairo), and their innovative sit-in continued for 18 days under the cameras and in front of the eyes of the world, before President Hosni Mubarak resigned on February 11, after 30 years of ruling the country;

However, the phrase "leave" that the Egyptians insisted on, and became the slogan everywhere, later became the weakness of these revolutions, according to the author.

With the fall of two Arab autocrats in less than a month, the race began, so Yemenis, Libyans, Bahrainis, and then Syrians took to the streets in great numbers, inspiring and encouraging each other, and dictators trembling over their thrones and preparing to defend them.

In the end, each country found a method that suits it. While the armies of Gulf neighbors moved to help the monarchy in Bahrain crush the rebellion once and for all, the military intervention by NATO in Libya came, at the initiative of France, to protect the population from the fatal anger of Muammar Gaddafi. ;

After the dictator was killed, the country fell into chaos and civil war, just as what happened in Syria and Yemen, where revolutionaries took up arms, and Egypt returned to a fierce military dictatorship.

Thus, the arc of democracy closed - as the author says - because decades of tyranny cannot be eliminated in a few weeks.

Indeed, even within a few years, especially when powerful, diverse forces unite in their anti-revolutionary conditions to impede the demands of Arab youth for democratic change.

However, this liberation movement - according to the writer - encouraged the opponents to mobilize to oppose it, and aroused a new appetite inside and outside each country, the regimes began to cling to power tightly, and proceeded to crush their people under bombardment, as Bashar al-Assad did in Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, The country's entry into civil war accelerated, as supporters of the fallen dictatorships rose from the resistance.

Resentment, and it


seems to the author that the emergence of Islamists is the first to benefit from revolutions that they did not plan, that was the first challenge, as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Ennahda Party in Tunisia won the first free elections after the revolution.

Because they are better organized and more united than the spontaneous democratic movements that were born from the demonstrations, this alternative has caused great disappointment among the young protesters looking for freedom, as well as among those who have enthusiastic about their cause around the world.

By taking advantage of the turmoil resulting from stormy transformations, fierce crackdowns, or civil wars according to the state, extremists and jihadists have appeared in different regions, and imposed themselves in Syria and Iraq by establishing an "Islamic state" and terrorizing the world, as the author says.

The author quotes an article in the magazine "The Mediterranean Junction", which devoted its latest issue to "revolutions and counter-revolutions in the Arab world," in which historian Jean-Pierre Feliu says, "It took dictatorships a mysterious game to reinvigorate the jihadi scarecrow everywhere and justify an enemy wave The revolution in its name has reached an unprecedented level of ferocity. "

Dashed hopes


However, the writer says, the "Arab Spring", which would not have lasted more than one season according to skeptics, had unexpected consequences in 2019 in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan.

The writer concluded that the term Arab Spring was developed by the Western press, referring to the "Spring of Peoples" in 1848 in Europe, when hopes of liberation were dashed at that time by the existing forces, and it took nearly a century before Western Europe embodied the dream of these revolutions.

However, achieving the aspirations of Arab youth in freedom and dignity may take less time, especially since the Arab Spring is not more than ten years old.