The “Arab Spring” is ten years old. Ten years is not nothing on the scale of a lifetime, but it is little on the scale of history, in particular that of Arab state building. The timeline of this incredible chain reaction is well known. On December 17, 2010, the unfortunate Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, immolated himself in front of the governorate of Sidi Bouzid. His desperate gesture, in reaction to the confiscation of his cart by the police, marks the three strokes of a geopolitical “big bang”.
The Tunisian street ignites and brings down the dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, January 14, 2011. His daring inspires the Egyptians, who overthrow the despot Hosni Mubarak on February 11. With a staggering domino effect, Yemenis, Libyans, Bahrainis and Syrians are rising in turn. Smaller protest rallies are even taking place in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Revolutionary hope, carried by the hectic news flashes of Al-Jazeera, galvanizes the Arab world.
The slogan “The people want the fall of the regime”, derived from a verse by Abu El-Kacem Chebbi, the “Tunisian Voltaire”, proclaimed in classical Arabic from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to those of the Persian Gulf, becomes the rallying cry of populations in search of dignity. These words crystallize, better than a UN expert report, the overwhelming failure of the governance structures in place in North Africa and the Middle East: police and predatory systems, similar to an occupation regime. , which have become the main obstacle to the economic, social and cultural emancipation of these regions.
An increasingly unsustainable status quo
The much hoped-for renewal did not take place. Of the six countries to have embarked on the adventure in 2010-2011, only Tunisia has succeeded, year after year, in its transition to democracy. The others have sunk either into civil war (Syria, Libya, Yemen) or into authoritarian regression (Egypt, Bahrain), against the backdrop of a jihadist push. But in 2019, a second revolutionary wave swept through the region, affecting four additional countries: Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq. In total, in ten years, almost half of the 22 Arab countries have been the scene of a large-scale popular uprising.
This new “spring” shows that the process of self-determination of the Arab peoples is still underway, no offense to the supporters of a certain culturalism, in a hurry to conclude that Islam and democracy are not compatible. After all, this movement is relatively young. Most of today’s Arab states emerged in the early twentiethe century, on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, or even later. After freeing themselves from European colonial rule in the wake of the Second World War, they must now free themselves from the rule of local autocrats.
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