Maha Yahya
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restoration since 2011. In Egypt, in 2013,
the military overthrew the country’s
Ärst democratically elected government,
replacing it with a dictatorship under
the control o President Abdel Fattah
el-Sisi. Since taking power, Sisi has ruled
the country with an iron Äst: between
2013 and 2018, the security forces
disappeared over 1,500 Egyptians. And
in July 2019, the country’s parliament
approved a draconian law curtailing the
inÁuence o nongovernmental organiza-
tions by limiting their scope o action
and freedom o movement.
The starkest example o autocratic
restoration is in Syria. In 2011, the
country saw massive protests against the
dictatorial regime o President Bashar al-
Assad. Yet rather than step down or
meet popular demands for reform, Assad
ordered his troops to Äre on peaceful
demonstrators, launching a bloody civil
war that has killed more than hal a
million people and displaced millions
more. Today, the once tottering Assad
regime is mopping up the last remnants
o opposition and reestablishing control.
Thousands o political prisoners have
been disappeared or languish in regime
dungeons, and the government is pre-
venting around 5.6 million refugees and
6.2 million internally displaced people
from returning home.
Meanwhile, the Saudi and Emirati
regimes, faced with domestic criticism
o their stalled war in Yemen, have jailed
bloggers, human rights activists, jour-
nalists, and lawyers for criticizing the
government online. In perhaps the most
notorious example o this increased
intolerance o dissent, Saudi agents
murdered the journalist Jamal
Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul in October 2018. In Lebanon,Yet for most o the Middle East, a
more liberal economy did not result in a
more liberal political sphere. Modest
protest movements in Egypt and Syria
were quickly suocated by the govern-
ment. Civic initiatives were stiÁed,
whereas the work o Islamic charities
and other faith-based organizations was
encouraged, especially in social and
emergency assistance, poverty allevia-
tion, and microÄnance programs. For
the leaders o these states, economic
liberalization was not intended to
promote free markets and free minds;
instead, it was seen as a means to main-
tain the cohesion and loyalty o the
regime’s elite. As state resources came
under strain, privatization became a
strategy for funneling assets to those
already in power.
This unraveling served as the back-
drop to the Arab Spring. In December
2010, a Tunisian street vendor set himsel
on Äre to protest his mistreatment at
the hands o a local ocial. His act set
o a tsunami o protests. In the ensuing
months, people across the region—in
Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania,
Morocco, Oman, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia,
Yemen, and the Palestinian territories—
took to the streets to demand justice,
equality, and an end to their countries’
repressive political regimes.
DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN
The economic and political conditions
that produced the Arab Spring have
only worsened in recent years. With the
exception o Tunisia, where the opposi-
tion succeeded in establishing a demo-
cratic political system that remains in
place today, many countries o the
Middle East have seen an autocratic