Part 1

Overview

On 10 December 2010, the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire out of despair at his hopeless living conditions. His fate moved hundreds of thousands of mostly young people to take to the streets to protest against the regime. The protests not only ousted the elderly dictator Ben Ali but also sparked a series of uprisings that rocked the Arab world. A new era of democracy, dubbed the “Arabellion” or “Arab Spring”, seemed to be dawning that would sweep the entrenched authoritarian structures onto the rubbish heap of history.