THE ARAB SPRING

          

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           The Arab Spring is a series of anti-government protests that started in the middle east. The Arab Spring first started in Tunisia. The movement soon spread across to Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Oman etc. These movements were civil movements, which were carried out against the government of these respective countries. Some of these movements saw a change in the government in their respective countries while some of them saw a change in the government’s economic and political policies. This Arab Spring is famously related to the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, a 1978 democratic revolution in Czechoslovakia.

          This Arab Spring started first in Tunisia. For nearly two decades Tunisia has been under the rule of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Corruption had gripped into every strata of the Tunisian lives during his rule. The movement started in December 2010, when a food vendor named Mohamed Bouaziz, was approached by the Tunisian Authorities about his unlicensed carts. He offered to pay a fine, instead his vegetables were confiscated and he was publicly humiliated by these authorities. Local authorities refused to hear his case of harassment. In a show of protest, he stood in front of a local governor’s office and set himself on fire. Bouaziz became a martyr and he became a poster boy for the local Tunisian who were suffering from unemployment under the Ben Ali regime. This protest soon spread across Tunisia. This protest was a civil protest but it spread like a wildfire throughout the country, through the social media and the digital means of communication. On January 11,2011, the Tunisian government fell apart and Ben Ali fled the country into exile.

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          This movement soon spread into Tunisia’s neighbors like Algeria, Libya and to the rest of the Arab world. In Libya the military dictator Muammar Gadhafi was overthrown by the Libyans after decades of military rule in the country. Similarly, in Egypt, it saw a change in the Hosni Mubarak government, when Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign from his President’s post due to uprising against him in his country. In Jordan, King Abdullah II was forced to make constitutional changes according to the demands of the protesters. In Oman, Sultan Quaboos gave some economic concession to meet the demands of the people of Oman. This movement also saw the government’s changes in many Arab countries like Algeria, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, Syria, Yemen etc.

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          Though the Arab Spring had brought governmental changes in these respective countries but these changes has also led to the downfall of the few countries. Let us take the example of Yemen, where the war between the Houthi rebels, backed by Iran and the Yemen government’s military forces has gripped the country into famine, unemployment and malnutrition. The other example is that of Syria and Iraq. In Syria and Iraq, the protest against the government has led to the rise of terrorist groups like the ISIS. As a result of the war in the region between these forces, it has led to the death of millions of people and has created a refugee crisis in the region. In Libya it has created a power vacuum in the government as a result of which the civil war has turned into a military one. While the Arab Spring also had positive effect as it has brought stable democratic governments in Egypt and Tunisia. Democracy has been restored in these countries. In the end it is the people who turn up and embrace the change. Sometimes the change is the change that they had expected it to be and sometimes it is just the opposite. After all it is the government that the people choses to have for their motherland. We believe that government works when it sustains and supports the democracy. In the end as in the past it depends on the people who turn up and the people who don’t. it’s in their hands and it’s in our hands.