Tunisian President Kais Saied is set to gain more traction on a new charter expected to be approved in a referendum on Monday, in what critics fear will be a march toward a one-man government over a country that rose up in opposition to the dictatorship in 2010.
Saied’s warring parties fear that the adjustments could only deal a blow to democracy in Tunisia, widely noted as the only good fortune of the “Arab Spring” uprisings opposed to autocratic rule that have resulted in renewed repression and civil wars.
Here is a summary of how the Arab Spring spread to the affected countries:
TUNISIA
Fruit trader Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 17, 2010 after a local official confiscated his wheelbarrow. 2011, inspiring revolts elsewhere. Tunisia held its first democratic elections in October, won through the moderate Islamist Ennahda, which had been banned by Ben Ali. A new charter builds a parliamentary formula passed in 2014, and Tunisians decide on their lawmakers and president in free and fair elections, the last in 2019. However, economic turmoil has caused hardship and disillusionment. Illegal emigration to Europe has increased. The economy, which relies heavily on tourism, has been affected by COVID-19.
In July 2021, President Kais Saied froze parliament and looted measures that his belligerent parties called a coup but were welcomed by Tunisians who were tired of political wrangling and paralysis.
A year later, Saied called a referendum on a new charter that the presidency, crowning what his belligerent parties called a one-man march. Saied said freedoms will be protected.
EGYPT
President Hosni Mubarak had been in power since 1981, but on January 25, 2011, large anti-government protests began, when activists called a Tunisia-inspired “day of rage. “As thousands of protesters gathered after Friday prayers 3 days later, Mubarak deployed the army. The protests gained momentum, he got rid of the police from the streets and the army withdrew until Mubarak resigned, only to be tried in August for abuse of force and killing of protesters. The Muslim Brotherhood, once outlawed, won the 2012 election. However, a year later, the army, spurred on by anti-Brotherhood protests, overthrew the new president, Mohamed Morsi, who was jailed and died in 2019. Army leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi replaced him as president. A crackdown on dissent and the military has faced a long-standing insurgency of Islamist militants in Sinai.
Mubarak died as a loose guy in 2020 at the age of 91, and fees were cut in 2014.
YEMEN
Crowds took to the streets against President Ali Abdullah Saleh since January 29, 2011, deepening divisions within the military and between political blocs. Saleh was injured in an assassination attempt in June 2011, forcing him to seek redress in Saudi Arabia. he negotiated a transition deal that includes a “national dialogue” aimed at resolving Yemen’s unrest, with saleh’s former MP Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi set to serve as president until the elections. disorders in the north of the Iran-allied Houthi organization and a revival southern secessionist movement. bloody stagnation, worsening food shortages and cholera outbreaks. Former President Saleh was killed in a roadside attack in 2017 after switching sides, abandoning the Iran-aligned Houthis for the Audi-led S coalition.
A UN-backed ceasefire went into effect in April 2022 and Hadi, who had spent years in exile in Saudi Arabia, was replaced by a presidential council.
LIBYA
First in Benghazi and then in Misrata, protests erupted in February 2011, temporarily turning into an armed revolt opposed to Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule. In March, the UN Security Council declared a no-fly zone to protect civilians from Gaddafi and NATO forces. he introduced airstrikes to stop his advance on Benghazi. In August, the rebels took Tripoli and in October, Gaddafi captured hiding in an evacuation pipeline outside his hometown of Sirte and killed him.
Local militias seized the territory and, when chaos broke out, the country was divided in 2014 between Western and Eastern factions. The UN helped negotiate a political settlement in 2015, but in practice, the country remained divided and the Islamic State took Sirte for more than a year. In 2019, Eastern Commander Khalifa Haftar introduced a new war, attacking Tripoli for 14 months before his forces retreated. Now the standoff was international, with Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt supporting Haftar and Turkey supporting Tripoli. government.
A UN-backed election, which is part of a peace procedure aimed at rebuilding Libya, was cancelled in December 2021 for reasons such as disputes over rules.
In March 2022, the Sirte-based parliament appointed a new minister, but the Tripoli-based government refused to resign, leaving Libya divided between rival administrations.
BAHRAIN
On February 14, 2011, the largest protests in years erupted in Bahrain as protesters echoed the Egyptian crowd’s call for a “day of anger” calling for the ruling monarchy to grant democracy. As protesters and police clashed in the coming weeks, sectarian tensions emerged in a country where many Shiite Muslims in the majority had long been angry with the Sunni ruling dynasty. On March 14, the neighboring Sunni kingdom, Saudi Arabia, sent tanks to the road connecting it to Bahrain to protect primary facilities. The government declared martial law and expelled the protesters from the camp that had their symbol. Protests continued for months, killing at least 35 people, but the monarchy suppressed the uprising and restored control.
SYRIA
When the first protests began to spread across Syria in March 2011, President Bashar al-Assad sent security forces and there was a wave of arrests and shootings. In July, protesters took up arms and army outfits joined the revolt, then subsidized through the Gulf monarchies and Turkey, as Assad responded with airstrikes. Full-blown war broke out. As chaos gripped the country, the Islamic State organization seized a swath of territory in 2014, attracting a U. S. -led coalition to Kurdish fighters in the northeast. Support from Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah movement helped Assad regain control of much of the country, defeating rebels in areas such as Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta from 2015 to 2018. By the end of the decade, thousands had died and more than a portion of the country’s pre-war population had been displaced, with the country divided between Assad, Turkish-subsidized rebels and Kurdish-led teams.