IRMO Brief 05/2021, "The Arab Spring: A Decade Later"

Introduction

‍This year marks the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring. Suicide of an unemployed young man in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid on 17 December 2010 has enticed the protesters to take to the streets and it has triggered and open rebellion against Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali - who on 14 January 2011 boarded on plane and fled to Saudi Arabia, escaping in front of the revolutionary chaos. Successful toppling of Ben Ali has set off a string of uprising in the Arab countries that are today known as the Arab Spring. Nowadays, a decade later, it can be stated with certainty that the revolutions of the Arab Spring were not successful. These revolutions have not ushered in neither modernization nor democratization
of the Arab countries, which was the revolutions declared objective. To the contrary, even Tunisia, a country said to have had a successful revolution, had also replaced one dictatorship with another.

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