Assad: The Last Leader To Be Toppled By The Arab Spring
Sumaira FH Published December 08, 2024 | 11:10 PM
Dubai, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 8th Dec, 2024) For nearly 14 years, Syria's Bashar al-Assad resisted the Arab Spring that ousted leaders across the region, maintaining power through repression and support from Russia and Iran.
The pro-democracy movement, which began in Tunisia in late 2010 and swept across the region, toppled autocrats in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and, eventually, Sudan.
But after nearly 25 years as president, over half of that time fighting a brutal civil war that erupted after a crack down on protesters, he was finally overthrown by Islamist-led rebels in an 11-day offensive.
AFP takes a look at the leaders brought down since the movement was set in motion:
Syria: openness and oppression
When he became president in 2000, aged 34, after his father Hafez al-Assad had ruled for 30 years, there were hopes of more openness.
This was the time of the "Damascus Spring". But it did not last long.
In 2011, when popular protests erupted in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring, the Assad government cracked down without mercy and civil war resulted.
Only its allies Russia and Iran, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, kept Assad's regime in power.
A 2020 truce ushered in a period of relative calm, allowing Syria to return to the Arab League group from which it had been banished for years.
But Assad's government ignored appeals for a political solution, and made no concessions to the opposition.
Tunisia: Ben Ali the first to go
The first leader to be swept away by the Arab Spring was Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
He came to power on November 7, 1987, raising people's hopes for change after he staged a bloodless coup against the ageing Habib Bourguiba, declaring him unfit to rule.
But Ben Ali became even more authoritarian than his predecessor and his relatives took over whole sectors of the economy, which was likened in a US State Department cable to a mafia, according to documents released by WikiLeaks.
At the end of 2010, protests broke out in Tunisia's neglected interior and then spread to the main cities in the east.
After a huge demonstration in Tunis on January 14, 2011, Ben Ali left the country, hoping he could later return to power. He died in exile in Saudi Arabia in September, 2019.
The self-proclaimed "guide" of the September 1969 revolution, Libya's Moamer Kadhafi was in power for 42 years.
He was known for championing Arab unity and using the country's vast oil resources to bolster his allies and fund groups including the Irish Republican Army.
At home, he oversaw a unique system of so-called democracy by the people but with himself as leader.
The Kadhafi government was accused of involvement in the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing and a 1989 blast that downed French UTA Flight 772 over Niger. These killed hundreds of people and led to Libya coming under embargo before compensating the victims.
When the people rose up against Kadhafi in 2011, NATO intervened and the former dictator was killed by rebels on October 20 in circumstances that remain murky.
Egypt: Mubarak's 30 years
Egypt's vice-president at the time, Hosni Mubarak, became president when Islamists assassinated Anwar Sadat at a military parade in 1981.
He stayed in power for 30 years, despite an Arab boycott over Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, economic problems and violence by radical Islamists.
Mubarak confronted Arab Spring protests in January 2011 at a time when he was also suspected of considering handing power to his son Alaa, along the lines of Syria's Assad dynasty.
In the end, Mubarak was abandoned by the institution that brought him to power, the military, and in February 2011 he quit.
Mubarak went on trial charged with causing the deaths of demonstrators and with corruption. He was jailed but acquitted in 2017, and died in February 2020.
Yemen: Saleh held on till the end
Ali Abdullah Saleh liked to compare ruling Yemen to dancing on the heads of snakes, as the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country was a complex and violent mosaic of tribal interests. But he had keen political instincts, and ruled for 33 years.
Saleh survived rebellions by rebels from the minority Zaidi Shiite sect of islam who would come to be known as Huthis after their leader, and also a civil war following a failed attempt to unify the north and south.
When the 2011 protests reached Yemen, he reluctantly ceded power to his number two, Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
But Saleh still tried to hold on, even aligning himself with his former enemies the Huthis, who ended up assassinating him in December 2017.
Sudan: war crimes suspect Bashir
Omar al-Bashir seized power in an Islamist-backed coup in Sudan in 1989 before himself being overthrown by the army 30 years later during popular protests.
He was indicted in 2009 and 2010 by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan, where he unleashed the janjaweed militia in response to a rebel uprising.
Bashir was held in Kober prison, in the Khartoum area, but the military later said he was transferred to a military hospital, remaining under guard, before war began in April last year between the military and rival paramilitaries.
bur/mh/srm/it
