The Arab Spring was identified as a series of pro-democracy revolutions that enveloped most Muslim countries. The flood of protests and demonstrations started in the spring of 2011 in the most Arab world. The start of these revolutions began when Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor resolved to set himself on fire in protest against the government of Tunisia. Mohamed Bouazizi got angry when his fruit stands were confiscated by the government officials without any form of compensation for his goods. As a result of Mohamed death, a revolution started in Tunisia to transform the government of that time (Anderson, 2011). The protestors were so successful in overthrowing the government. After overthrowing the government, the protestors began to form a transitional democratic government. It was not long before certain Islamic countries started to follow the same path. The countries that followed Tunisia include Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, and Oman. As much as these countries conducted demonstrations and protests, only Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen carried extreme protests and major transformations in their governments.
Up to date, Syria is still stuck in a civil war but other countries tackled with weak governments and transformed from the old regime to the new regime. However, the countries that started from Arab Spring experienced a difficult time in changing the systems of the previous government to democratic governments. This seemed difficult because they were trying to make a huge change from a dictator-based government to a democratic government, which is not an easier change to complete successfully. These transitions in affected countries resulted in chaos. Some people in other countries completely disobeyed the established new laws and used modern technology in distributing information about the protests in the world. This raised worldwide concern and everybody was aware of what was happening in these countries. The Arab Spring movement was an expression of a deep-seated resentment of the Arab dictatorship, rising prices, unemployment, and corruption.
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Egypt has experienced a tremendous change in the political landscape after the Arab Spring political movement. Since the Arab Spring protests, the government of Egypt has transformed from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. In the first fair election, the Freedom and Justice Party made a clean sweep in Parliamentary elections but the liberals did not make an impact. The Arab Spring movement marked the end of the ruler-army nexus from the helm of the political affairs in Egypt (Korany and El-Mahdi, 2012). The Arab Spring movement has also made different political parties to gain considerable political ground in the country. Currently, it is not only Muslim Brotherhood that is influential in Egypt but there are also other Islamic groups such as Salafists that have risen and progressively gaining ground in the national politics. Evidently, Islamists are currently adopting adjustment strategy and political parties such as the Free Egyptian Party, Third Current, and Tagammu party has started to surface. This is a positive sign that signals the dramatic evolution of a democratic system which was not experienced in the past regime.
The Arab Spring also contributed to a seismic change in the social contract between the ruling government and its populations. The Arab Spring that occurred in Egypt demonstrated strong regional dynamics that spread within the country because of cultural affinity that was being felt by Egyptian. After the Arab Spring, Egypt has experienced a dramatic change in social justice. The country has erected social justice and redistribution into one source of legitimacy. The social issues such as unemployment, inequalities, rising food prices and corruption that prompted popular mobilization have drastically changed. However, the rate of unemployment did not change at a greater extent as compared to other social issues. Successive governments still ignore the poor and have increased these burdens through prices.
The transition government in Egypt intend to enhance the relationship of the government and people by reducing police brutality that was experienced in the past regime but this has not been achieved as expected. However, the citizens of Egypt are still looking for security and safety in the streets. After the revolution, the government applied key reforms through decreasing energy subsidies, increasing fuel prices, electricity tariffs and introduction of new taxes (Howard and Hussain, 2013). The Arab Spring movement increased the amount of terrorist activity in Egypt due to security instability in the country. The anger of people made them storm various police stations which disrupted police officers in planning citizens’ security. This led to the emergence of armed terrorists that confronted the peace of citizens. In terms of Egypt’s economy, the Arab Spring brought a tremendous impact on the country. It increased the foreign exchange to approximately 20 billion dollars as compared to other regimes. However, this increase was followed by a decrease in the foreign investment and Egypt stock exchange indicated a decrease of more than 65 million dollars which was the lowest level experienced in foreign direct investment in Egypt.
The Arab Spring in Egypt had a great impact on both non-state and state terrorism. The emergence of the terrorist act was attributed to the increasing weakness in numerous states in the country. The state that had low levels of legitimacy was not able to maintain the loyalty of many people within their populations (Aras and Yorulmazlar, 2016). When non-state was repressed, they provoked the opposition. The Arab Spring in Egypt, therefore, lead to the emergence of terrorism sponsored state that posed a significant threat to domestic as well as regional security. As much as the Arab Spring brought democracy in Egypt, it hindered security at a great extent. Therefore, discussions should be done to seal the various fault lines that exist between Islamic movements and the Muslim Brotherhood to prevent terrorism sponsorship in Egypt states.
References
Anderson, L. (2011). Demystifying the Arab spring: parsing the differences between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Foreign Affairs , 2-7.
Aras, B., & Yorulmazlar, E. (2016). State, region and order: geopolitics of the Arab Spring. Third World Quarterly , 37 (12), 2259-2273.
Howard, P. N., & Hussain, M. M. (2013). Democracy's fourth wave?: digital media and the Arab Spring . Oxford University Press.
Korany, B., & El-Mahdi, R. (Eds.). (2012). Arab Spring in Egypt: revolution and beyond . American University in Cairo Press.
