The term “Arab spring” It is a definition that includes all those revolutionary insurrections that have affected the so -called intensity with different degrees of intensity “Arab world”, since 2011. Although in some cases these protests have been simple acts of civil disobediencein others they instead gave birth to real armed insurrectionsthen resulted in very bloody civil warssome of which are still ongoing. Almost 15 years after the beginning of those protests, and although the events are still ongoing, it must be bitterly noted that, despite the fact that it was the good intentions, after the “Arab Spring” the geopolitical situation overall remains more than ever criticism.
The Arab spring and the beginning of the protests in Tunisia
Without a doubt, the triggering event of the Arab spring was theautoimulation and subsequent deathwhich occurred respectively on December 17, 2010 and January 4, 2011, of Tarek El-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizia poor street vendor of fruit which, not yet twenty -seventene, decided to set fire to the town of Sidi bouzid in Tunisiaafter the local police, who had already targeted him in the past, had seized the cart with which he moved and showed his goods and the electronic scales necessary to make it weigh.
The death of Bouazizi, amplified and relaunched outdated by social media, had on the Arab world the effect in retrospective fuse on the dynamite, causing the explosion of over the following months An infinite series of mass protests who immediately put the regimes that governed those countries in crisis; Starting with Tunisia where ten days after Bouazizi’s death the dictator Zine el abidine ben ali He was forced to escape, after over 23 years of undisputed government.
The next escalation and the countries involved
The success of the revolution in Tunisia galvanized the squares of the rest of the Arab world, starting with Egypt, always a political and ideological engine of the Middle Eastern area. THE’February 11, 2011pressed by square protests and abandoned by the armed forces, Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarakan absolute leader of Egypt for almost thirty years, was forced to resign and was arrested.
Under the push of the squares, the governments in Kuwait, Lebanon and Oman were forced to resign or suffered substantial reshuffles. In Morocco, Algeria and Jordan despite the absence of dramatic political evolutions, constitutional reforms were still implemented to meet the complaints, especially of a political nature, expressed by activists. Variable intensity protests, culminating in success, also took place in the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Sudan and Palestinian territories. In these cases, however, the authorities generally responded with Economic concessionsespecially by expanding the welfare welfare programs having the purpose of appealing above all youth discontent.
Arab winter
Unfortunately, things were not successful everywhere: in Bahrainthe generalized discontent soon resulted in a civil revolt by the then Shiite majority of the population against the monarchical regime of the family Khalifa instead belonging to the Sunni branch of the Islamic religion. Thanks to the armed intervention of Saudi Arabia, the king of Bahrain, Hamad Bin Isa Bin Salman at Khalifahe managed not only to suppress the revolt but in the following five years he vigorously carried out a demographic and migratory policy that facilitated the Sunnis, at the expense of the Shiites, so much so as to completely overthrow the relationships of demographic force between the two communities (if in 2009 the Shiites constituted over 70% of the Bahreinite population, today their share dropped to 45% making them become a minority for the first time).
Even worse situations occurred in Libya, Syria and YemenCountries that sink into dramatic and bloody civil wars still in progress. Although the regimes that had ruled those countries with iron fist, such as those of Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi in Libya, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen e Bashar al-Assad In Syria, the three countries are literally imploded by creating as many “Geopolitical black holes” that to date the international community has not yet managed to stabilize. The end, or the decrease, of progressive inspiration protests and the subsequent degeneration of civil wars even led to the coinage of the term “Arabic winter”To describe the events following 2012.
The legacy of the Arab spring
Making the necessary premise that in reality the Arab spring has not yet ended and that only when this historical season has really ended in all respects will it be possible to analyze it in the round, what we can say limited to the period between 2010 and 2025 is that the three decades As soon as they ended, they were a period full of lights and shadows, but with a clear prevalence of the latter.
The Arab spring has crossed the whole territory of “Great Middle East enlarged” like an unstoppable tsunami, helping to cause the fall of authoritarian regimesinheritance of the past, but at the same time creating a void of power which has been filled now by the rise of old and new political subjects inspired by the ideology of extremist and militant Islamic Eslamic integrated, such as Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria and the even more heinous and famous ISIS.
Lastly we can at least say with confidence that to date the Arab Spring has completely failed in an attempt to “bring democracy” to the “Great Middle East enlarged” since even Tunisia, a cot country of the Arab spring has gradually slipped into the grip of a new dictatorial regime, now led by Kais Sied.
