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The last year was full of revolutions, fight for the justice and freedom, happiness, sadness, blood and tears in the Muslim World. It was unimaginable to think of existence of something like democracy and simple human rights such as voting or having freedom of speech in the countries of Middle East and Northern Africa where people believe in Allah since the day they were born to this world and pray every day- five times and jum"a Friday prayer. So many years, people were under the control of one man or one royal family and suffered enough from it and people couldn"t take it anymore.
Revolution in Tunisia
The clear example for this was the movement of Tunisian citizens against long lasting president Zine Al-Ebidine Ben Ali in a city of Sini Bouzi, in October, 2010. Demonstrators were marching peacefully against famine, inflation, unemployment, lack of production and political freedom throughout the country but the government chose the violent way to stop the demonstration and gave the permission to the police and military force to take a action against protester – their own citizens. During the clash between protesters and armed forces, many were injured and few of them left this world. The demonstration was heat up by the Tunisian man – Mohammad Bouazizi"s self-immolation on 17th of December and on a date of 14th of January 2011, president Zine Al- Ebidine resigned officially and fled to Saudi Arabia. This victory of Tunisian folks was the sparkle to the following revolutions throughout the Arab world.
Revolution in Egypt
Inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, Egyptians were uniting their voices to resign the current president Hosni Mubarrak through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Hosni Mubarak ruled solely the Arab Republic of Egypt for approximately 29 years – in other words it has been 29 years since he established his dictatorship. The following biography of Hosni Mubarak will tell who is Hosni Mubarak in brief.
Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak was born in 4th of May, 1928 in Capr al-Masalha, Egypt, married to Suzanni Mubarak and the father of 2 boys -Amal and Jamal. He graduated from Air Force university in Egypt with a bachelor degree and in 1972, was appointed as a head of Air Force and deputy minister of Ministry of Defence. During the war between Israeli, the participation of Air Force had such a positive influence and it earned Mubarak a good reputation. Not long after the war, in 1975 he promoted to the position of vice president under the 3rd president Anwar Sadat. Due to bottomless corruption and establishing secret negotiations with the United States and Israeli against the interest and benefit of Egyptian people more importantly against teachings of Allah, he was assassinated during the victory parade by the members of Muslim Brotherhood. After the assassination of 3rd president, Hosni Mubarak became the 4th president of the Arab Republic of Egypt and leader of National Democratic party. His hegemony remained without any tilt for 29 years.
With the beginning of 2011-1-25, thousands of Egyptians started gathering and demonstrating to end Mubarak"s regime in a peaceful way in the city of Cairo and Alexandria. Many statuses and comments on a widely known social networking sites – Facebook and Twitter were inspiring Egyptians to go out, demonstrate and add their voices to the crowd. The Egyptian government had to take an action against this and in 26th of January government decided to shut down the internet access and text messaging throughout the Egypt. The uprising became more violent in coming days, people were divided in anti and pro Mubarak regime and citizens were fighting with one another. After 2 days, in 28th of January, Mubarak appeared for the first time on the National Television and addressed to his citizens that he will change the current government but this was not what demonstrators wanted -what they need was only the fall of Mubarak"s regime. In 2nd of February, the internet access and mobile service came back to normal. Thousands of Facebook and Twitter users uploading videos, writing and commenting what is really happening in Egypt. 10th of February, Hosni Mubarak made a statement again but this time he promised that he will give his some power to vice president Omar Suleiman and opposition party. This announcement was viewed by the Egyptians as a total humiliation and people who were sitting in their homes came out to the streets to express their anger toward Hosni Mubarak and his deeply corrupted government. In the 11th of February, 2 million Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square and shouting irhal, irhal (leave leave) with the same tone. In the night of 11th, Omar Suleiman made an official statement about resignation of Hosni Mubarak. This announcement brought a great joy and happiness all over Egypt and became the model example that people can give a power to someone but when time comes they also have the power to take it from them.
Libyan Revolution
Arab World Revolution continued with country that estimated to have lots of oil – Libya. This time Libyan people’s movement against cruel dictator who had power for 40 years and declares himself as a king of kings – Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. The demonstration in Libya didn’t go smooth or peaceful way as in Egypt, the from the very beginning of the protest, the demonstrators face with the security force violence. Giving an order to fire against the citizens without any warning, shows to the world that how cold hearted and brutal Qaddafi is. Brief summary about Muammar al-Qaddafi:
He came to the power by overthrowing King Idris from his throne by military coup without any bloodshed in 1969. Muammar Qaddafi wrote manifesto called “A Green Book” same as Mao Zedong’s famous Red Book and argued that communism and capitalism are both form of slavery and all political parties are the one form of dictatorship. Every Libyans must have read this book and children supposed to study this book 2 hours daily. Since he was child, he admired the second president of Arab Republic of Egypt – Gamal Abdel Naser and the very admiration of himself toward Abdel Naser led to further good relationship between 2 countries. Many political and economical reforms were made since he came to power. Such as expel of the Italian citizens from the country, converted Christian calendar to Islamic calendar, illiteracy rate increased 10 % to 90 %, Libyan economic situation has increased in overall. There were positive changes had been made since he took over the control but life of ordinary Libyan man’s life remained steady. This had to do with the huge expenditure on military and countless corruptions.
In 1977, He resigned from the presidency and declared himself as a symbolic leader but the power was still in his hand. Corruption had taken all over the place in the government during his dominance and according to the latest Corruption Perceptions Index, the Libya is standing 168th out of 185 country with the index of 2.0. This is a sufficient evidence to prove how highly this country is corrupted. The main reason of the demonstration in Benazi was to put an end to this limitless corruption, overthrow Muammar Qaddafi and establish democratic society in a peaceful way.
After Qaddafi gave order to use cold weapon against the protesters, it turned out to be bloodshed fight between security force and residents of Libya. Many fights have been fought since 15th of February and 24th of February military force against Muammar and his government occupied the Misrata. Leaders of USA, Great Britain, and France were publicly criticizing Muammar al Qaddafi for his violation of human rights and asking him to step down voluntarily. After 2 days, Security Council of UN decided to take Muammar al Qaddafi and his family to International Criminal Court to be judged. On the date of 9th of March, missiles of NATO force has been launched and 30th of April, the missiles hit the Qaddafi’s home in Tripoli. International Criminal Court gave the authority to arrest Muammar al Qaddafi and his son Saif al-Islam for violating basic human rights. 7th of July, Muammar Qaddafi swore that he will fight until his last breath through public television. The protesters occupied the Tripoli – capital of Libya with litt resistance from pro government military force in August. 20th of September, USA president Barack Obama made an official statement that embassy of USA to Libya will be back to its normal work and asked pro government forces to stop resisting. Hideout of Muammar Qaddafi was discovered and 20th of October the rockets have been launched but Muammar al Qaddafi somehow survived from the surprise attack. However, group of protesters found him escaping from the building, and shot him dead. About 4 mobile phone videos proved that death of Muammar Qaddafi and Libyans were standing in line to see the corpse of their former leader lying on the ground motionless. This is how a man who once claims him as a king among kings, ended up under the feet of his people.
It has been one year since all of these events took place but the results of Arab World revolution haven’t concluded yet. The event that brought sudden change to world geo-politic still remained quite interesting topic among political analyst.
By Davaajav Zandanpurev
United Arab Emirates University student
