Custom «How Facebook Changed the World – The Arab Spring» Essay Paper

The Arab Spring

In the recent world, citizens of many countries have said no to dictatorship, government corruption, human rights violation, unemployment, economic decline, extreme poverty and inflations by holding demonstrations and eventually overthrowing the governments in these countries. This has been the case in the Arabic countries and mostly in Africa. We have the cases of countries like Egypt, Libya and recently Tunisia. With the help of activists, this has been a success and has seen the presidents of these countries give up power and resign, and others like Muammar Gadhafi ended up being killed.

The Role of the Youth

In these Arabic countries, there have been various problems that are leading to the riots and demonstrations concerning unemployment. These problems are mostly affecting youths in these countries. The youths make the majority in these countries, and in some countries they amount to more than 50% of the population. The problem of unemployment has made some youths in these countries opt to immigrate to the other countries. The problems are associated with bad governance in these countries. That is why the demonstrations in these countries are aiming to remove the president from power and to overthrow the government (Spencer, 2011).

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In most cases, the success of a coup is seen by spreading of information by the media houses. We have seen many media houses being shut down by the government in these countries so as to stop the information from spreading. This has become a challenge to the governments with the introduction of the social media and the Internet some years ago. With Facebook, for instance, the information can flow very fast.

It should be noted that the youths are the main users of the social media. You will find that in the countries where the Arab spring has occurred the youths form the majority of the population. With this background information, it can be noted that the youths played a great role in the revolution that took place in the Arab world. They spread the information in the social media like Facebook and Twitter, and this way mass number of them received the information very fast. They were motivated by the facts that they are the ones facing the challenges of unemployment. In Egypt, for instance, the number of people using social media increased rapidly by 3,691 percent from 2010 to 2011. The users are mostly the educated youths living in the urban areas. In Tunisia, the same case applies with many educated youths who live in the urban areas and use the social media.

The demonstration in Tunisia started in one of the activists’ blogs. The message was to call the other citizens to come together and demonstrate against the government. The message got to thousands of youths in the country, and this called the attention of the president. With the social media being accessed very easily even with mobile phones that allow the citizens to get access to the Internet, this was very easy for the activists. The activists knew that their blogs were targeted and thus they even put more effort in spreading the information.

The youths also joined the activists by posting as much as possible in the social media like Facebook and Twitter. One young man said that he posted it on Twitter every time he saw a policeman. With the large population of youths, this spread so fast to the point of calling the attention of the president in Tunisia. The president ordered to close down the social media and the Internet in the country, which was the event that just led to the demonstrations. The citizens wanted to know what was happening in the country, and they took to the streets one by one, and after a short while mass citizens were protesting on the streets (Peterson, 2011).

Comparison of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria

Egypt

The Arab spring in Egypt is dated to have started on 25^th January 2011 when Hosni Mubarak was in power. This led to many events that saw the country head to democratic elections when Hussein Mursi became the president of the nation. The chaos and demonstration made the prime ministers of the country, Nazif and Shafik, resign. The armed forces assumed the power and the constitution were later suspended and the parliament dissolved. The ruling party in Egypt was then dissolved and Mubarak was prosecuted together with his family. The president resigned after 18 days of protests in Egypt, and this ended his 30 years of presidency.

The major cause of the protests in the country was the dictatorship of the president and the unfair wealth distribution where the wealth was not evenly distributed among the citizens and in all parts of the country. Foreign nations also contributed to the protest in the country. President Obama of the United States of America said that democratic countries will develop unlike countries where dictatorship is applied.

Libya

Before the Arab spring, the country was led by President Gaddafi. The protests began on 17^th February 2011. Unlike Mubarak, the Egyptian president, Gadhafi refused to resign and even organized more and more protests. Just like in Egypt, the prime minister, Nasser Mohammed resigned from power. The opposition later took control of the major cities in Libya. Just like in Egypt, the Libyans were complaining of dictatorship, unemployment and non-growing economy as well as unfair wealth distribution. The foreign nations also contributed to the protests by the support of the opposition party to take control of the government. The protests just like in Egypt led to dissolution of the parliament in the country. With the forces taking control of the major cities in Libya, the president Gadhafi was killed. Unlike the Egyptian president, Gadhafi refused to give in an act that saw him meet his death (Donnison, 2011).

Bahrain

Aimed at achieving political freedom, the protests started on 14^th February 2011. They also wanted to have human rights respected. The demonstrators were inspired by the demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia, which are also Arabic nations.

The uprisings saw the death of at least 80 citizens. The king declared a state of emergency that was to last for three months. Unlike the case in Egypt and Libya, the uprisings in Bahrain did not lead to overthrowing of the monarchy. The event saw even some protestors undergo torture as the government made the orders. Just like in Egypt and Libya, the foreign nations did not support the acts of the leaders in the country and thus they were for the protests, and this further motivated the protestors. However, it was alleged that Iraq was supporting the monarch and the king (Höges, 2011).

Syria

The protests in the country started on 26^th January 2011. The whole thing started when a man was assaulted by a police officer in public, and the man was later arrested. The public started protesting for his release. Fifteen children were later arrested for writing articles against the government. The public again took to the streets because of this. Later, thousands of the public took to the streets wanting the president to resign.  

Despite many protests all over the country, the government and the president did not resign. Instead, the government fought the protestors killing hundreds of them. Talks were later held between the opposition and the government. According to the United Nations chief in charge of peacekeeping, Syria had entered a war period of Civil War where fellow citizens were fighting each other (Bakri, 2011).

Conclusion

The region of Middle East consists of some countries from Africa and Asia. The countries have the majority of their population as Muslims (92%). In most of these countries, dictatorship has been practiced since independence with the presidents and kings in the countries being in power for up to 42 years. The countries have also experienced a period of stagnant growth in the recent past as a result of this. This has seen the countries’ citizens realize the exploitation of the resources that should have been important and useful to the entire nation as whole. This has seen the citizens protest and overthrow the governments and advocate for democracy in the region. Recently this happened in Tunisia. The cultures of dictatorship in the region are slowly being eliminated through the protests by the public and the support of the foreign nations like the United States of America. The nations in the region have thus started growing at a faster rate economically, and this is what the citizens of the countries were looking forward to have when they were protesting. The youths are getting jobs and the rights of human beings are respected (Law, 2011).