ABSTRACT
Despite the two surprisingly quick and easy topplings of long-established autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt in February 2011, the Arab Spring played out in quite different ways in different countries. Eugene Rogan summarizes the varying trajectories of the protests in six countries, beginning with the unlikely spark provided by Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in an out-of-the-way Tunisian town, which in a matter of weeks forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Tunisian experience encouraged protestors elsewhere across the Arab world and led next to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, for thirty years the unchallenged president of Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous country. The next leader to fall, Muammar Gadhafi, did so in a far more violent fashion, as he was forced from office by a combination of homegrown militia fighters and NATO air and missile attacks. Gadhafi has been the only national leader to lose his life in the overthrow of regimes thus far. In Yemen, the brutal crackdown on protestors led even some of his own supporters to break with President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh eventually relinquished power in return for immunity from prosecution, a deal that has angered his critics, who were already unconvinced that his departure by itself marked a true transformation of the Yemeni regime. Other regimes have thus far withstood the pressure for change at the top. Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa remains in power, aided by the intervention of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which helped suppress Bahrain’s Shiite protests. And in Syria, President Bashar Assad has not hesitated to use the full force of the Syrian army to stave off a persistent but outgunned armed insurrection. Replacing neither a single leader nor an entire regime will ensure the success of democracy. Rogan notes three challenges that face any new Middle East democracy: establishing inclusive governments; drafting constitutions that, among other things, define the role of Islam in the nation’s political life; and handing over power peacefully when an opposing party defeats an incumbent party at the polls.
