The Arab uprisings: A decade of struggles

The Arab uprisings

A decade of struggles

Read in Arabic – اقرأ باللغة العربية

Authoritarianism, economic liberalization, and the roots of the 2011 uprisings

Ten years into the Tunisian Revolution

The specificities and limitations of ‘exceptionalism’

The workers’ movement, revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt

Mostafa Bassiouny & Anne Alexander

The February 20 Movement in Morocco

Roots of failure and lessons for the future

Saudi-UAE interventions: Arms, aid and counter-revolution

The Syrian revolt and the politics of bread

The 2019 Iraqi uprising and the feminist imagination

The new Algerian revolution and Black Lives Matter – a Fanonian perspective

Introduction
While gathering material for this collage, I looked through hundreds of pictures of the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan… In those countries where daily life is exhausting, where politics is utter violence, where the risks run by protesters include arbitrary detention and death, I found millions of people – men, women, young and not-so-young – gathered in the same places, in the same squares, together. In the face of the imposed despair (almost systemic), in the face of repression and humiliation, I remember – despite periodic feelings of helplessness – the overwhelming joy of seeing an ocean of unarmed people, defying fear, demanding ‘bread and freedom’, ‘dignity’ and ‘change’.
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Fourate Chahal El Rekaby

Collage 1 (Slogans)
‘How is my mother doing?’ reads a sign raised by a young Iraqi who has spent months sleeping in the streets - not even going back home for a day to see his own mother - in the open “strike” for the right to have a ‘homeland’ – while, on the opposite side, they kidnap, kill by the hundreds, wound by the thousands, use live ammunition, machine guns, stun grenades, tear gas, anti-riot tanks and mercenaries.
‘Mubarak, are you a mountain? Why don’t you move?’ reads a sign held by a young Egyptian woman. On the opposite side, Egypt’s corrupt ruling class think of themselves as immortals, and prepare their thrones for their heirs.
‘We are the descendants of Ali Ammar (la Pointe)’ – 60 years later, in Algeria, a young man (barely 20 years old) reminds us that he was born into the land of a million martyrs.

Collage 2 (Women)
There is Alaa Salah: this young Sudanese woman of 22 years of age, wearing the all-white traditional dress, climbs onto a car to spontaneously and fiercely addresses a crowd that listens and repeats after her ‘The bullet doesn’t kill: what kills is the silence of men!’ ‘My lover is a Kandaka!’ (Kandaka refers to a ‘strong woman’, a title for the queens and queen mothers of the ancient African Kingdom of Kush, also called Nubia).
There is also Mahienour El-Masry, arrested and imprisoned twice, in 2014 and in 2019.
While these women have become icons there are others – hundreds, thousands of them – who are not icons but who exist.‘Mubarak, are you a mountain? Why don’t you move?’ reads a sign held by a young Egyptian woman. On the opposite side, Egypt’s corrupt ruling class think of themselves as immortals, and prepare their thrones for their heirs.

Collage 3 (Humour)
There is the humour, almost surreal in the face of the violence, and disarming – because many of those who occupy the squares are almost kids. And so, just like that, Grendizer walks through the streets of Baghdad, holding the Iraqi flag high.

Collage 4 (Graffiti)
There are of course the walls, that are colourful, that speak of things unsaid, to the crowd itself, to the rest of the world, to the passers-by and to those who had thought that this ‘generation is not interested in politics’.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustraties door Fourate Chahal El Rekaby

This work was partly made possible by a financial contribution from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Netherlands through its partnership with the Fair Green and Global Alliance of which TNI is a member.

These essays do not necessarily reflect the views of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung with funds of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of the Federal Republic of Germany. This publication or parts of it can be quoted by others for free as long as they provide proper reference to the original publication.

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