How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world
A decade ago this month, protests forced Tunisia’s authoritarian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee his country. It was a quick and relatively peaceful revolution, coming after decades of stagnant but entrenched regimes across the Arab world.
Few at the time understood the power of the images of unrest being broadcast online and into homes across the Middle East. Within weeks, other significant protest movements would emerge, and by the middle of 2011, leaders in Cairo, Tripoli, Sana’a, Damascus and elsewhere were under serious pressure or had been swept away by a tidal wave of peaceful demonstrations and armed resistance.
Our interactive timeline captures the way the Arab spring emerged and then spread with remarkable speed and force across the Middle East. The information has been compiled by the Guardian based on news coverage and reports from human rights organisations, and is therefore not an exhaustive record. It is a visual retelling of key protests, moments of regime change and outbreaks of civil war that transformed the Middle East and wider world.
