The protesters demanded that their dictators would step down, they wanted higher standards of living, less corruption, and democratic institutions.

But did this massive wave of revolt pay off in the end?

This is the Arab Spring with Hindsight.

In the early 2010s, many Arab countries were ruled by dictators, some of whom had been in power for several decades and had dismantled much of the country's democratic institutions.

The protests started in Tunisia and spread in a matter of weeks to much of the Arab world, but to some countries, more than others.

Tunisia is a popular tourist destination, but beyond its beautiful beaches and rich cultural heritage, a deep frustration had been building for years.

Zine al-Abadine Ben Ali was the second president of Tunisia.

He assumed office little over 20 years earlier, after ousting the sitting president for being incompetent.

He and his family lived a life of extraordinary wealth.

In 2008, a series of classified communications from the US embassy in Tunis were leaked.

They made painfully clear how luxuriously the president was living.

Lavish dinners, pet tigers, trips to Saint-Tropez.

All the while, Tunisia was suffering.

Unemployment rates were at a record high, and the inflation on food prices caused serious hardships.

The final straw for the Tunisian people came a few years later, in a small town in central Tunisia, Sidi Bouzid.

Mohamed Bouazizi had been selling vegetables on the streets ever since he finished high school.

One day, a female police officer confiscated his cart with all of his vegetables.

She slapped him in the face, she spat on him, and insulted his dead father.

Humiliated and defeated, he went to the police station to file a report, but they didn't want to see him.

So he returned a few moments later, and in front of that same building, he set himself on fire.

Mohamed Bouazizi died a few days later.

He was 26 years old.

This act of extreme desperation shook the Tunisian people to the core.

They took to the streets in massive numbers, demanding that President Ben Ali would resign.

It took a month of protesting before the president fled the country, and another eight months, before his party was dissolved and Tunisia made its historic step towards democracy.

Only days after the president of Tunisia had stepped down, the first organized protests in Egypt had commenced.

The streets of Cairo filled with a familiar chant.

They wanted for President Mubarak to resign, but he had different ideas.

Hosni Mubarak had ruled Egypt for almost 30 years, but at the ripe age of 83, he knew that his end was near, so he envisioned handing over power to his son.

But many Egyptians felt more for a democratic process.

This showed incredible valour and firmness in the face of the government's brutal oppression.

But luckily for them, two weeks into the protests, the military publicly sided with the protesters.

A week later, President Mubarak resigned.

Later that year, Egyptians voted on a free ballot for the first time in 80 years.

Egypt had toppled its dictator less than a month after Tunisia, partly because of the military, but with hindsight, we know that that same military had ulterior motives.

I'll come back to that in a little bit.

The day that President Ben Ali of Tunisia stepped down, protests erupted in Libya, but their ruler had been in charge a little while longer.

Muammar Gaddafi came to power in the late 1960s after overthrowing Libya's first and only king.

Libya had just found oil, and Gaddafi saw how foreign companies and a handful of elites were enriching only themselves.

Gaddafi renegotiated the oil contracts and managed to keep a majority share of his oil revenue for Libya.

He then reinvested this in the country.

Libya developed rapidly, and the standard of living of the Libyan people became some of the highest in the region.

All of this made him tremendously popular.

But as the years passed by, his rule became more and more authoritarian.

He wouldn't tolerate any opposition and went to extreme lengths to consolidate all power for himself.

Gaddafi became a dictator.

It started with a handful of protests, but after government troops fired with live ammunition into the crowds, it turned vile, and the unrest escalated into a full-blown civil war.

Gaddafi was pro-Africa and anti-Western, and was sitting on an enormous wealth of natural resources.

He wasn't liked by some of the world's most powerful countries, who in return generously funded the many opposition groups, fueling a proxy war and escalating the conflict even further.

Eight months into the conflict, Gaddafi was captured and killed.

This left Libya in a power vacuum, with opposition groups competing for control.

Funded by faraway governments and divided amongst itself, Libya's revolution was off to a bloody start.

Almost in perfect synchrony, as the president of Tunisia stepped down, protests in Yemen erupted.

Ali Abdullah Saleh had been the president of Yemen for 22 years, and he was anxiously following the events in Tunisia.

He decided to tolerate absolutely no dissent.

When a first couple of activists protested and called for President Saleh to step down, he arrested them immediately.

But amongst them was a young woman, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead of inspiring fear like President Saleh had hoped, these arrests inspired a massive revolt.

Yemeni took to the streets in the thousands and kept protesting for well over a year, until the government finally conceded.

President Saleh stepped down, but only to hand over power to his vice-president.

Yemeni longed for change, but only got a change of the guard.

Syria had a very similar case, but with a very different outcome.

Bashar al-Assad became Syria's president in 2000, after taking over from his father, who had ruled the country since 1971.

Many Syrians knew nothing else but the reign of the al-Assad family.

The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt had just been overthrown, and this gave the Syrian people some hope.

The catalyst for their uprising happened in Daraa, a small town in the south of Syria.

A few young boys had sprayed gravity on the wall of a local school, saying, it is your turn next, doctor.

The police arrested 15 children and questioned them in detention.

One of them, a 13-year-old boy, was killed after having been brutally tortured by the police.

This sparked protests in various large cities across the nation.

But President al-Assad cracked down incredibly hard on any dissent, killing hundreds of protesters and detaining many more in just the first few weeks.

But the Syrians wouldn't quietly return home.

The opposition started forming militias, and a year after the protests had started, the conflict had expanded into a full-fledged civil war.

A year has now passed since the start of the Arab Spring.

Three civil wars have started, and three leaders were toppled.

In Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, and Algeria, there were also major uprisings.

In Morocco, Oman, Kuwait, and Jordan, the government was quick to make concessions and avoided any serious escalation.

In Saudi Arabia, there were protests by minority Shia Muslims, but these were quietly subdued.

And the king, and later his son, started to pass reforms that allowed more civil liberties for women and minority groups.

But the loud cries for more jobs, higher standards of living, and democratic institutions were all met in various degrees.

This chart shows the standard of living per country, and this is where the Arab Spring started.

In all countries, it remained stagnant, or it dropped.

Youth unemployment has risen in all these countries.

Corruption is about the same, or even got slightly worse.

The lower the number on this chart, the more corruption is perceived.

But on the Democracy Index, something interesting happens.

Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia all overthrew their government at the start of the Arab Spring and showed real promise in the first few years.

But Libya descended into civil war, and Egypt's democratic process was undermined.

In 2011 and 2012, the Brotherhood won the presidency and a plurality in parliament.

But later that year, the Supreme Court dissolved the parliament.

In 2013, after months of tensions, the only democratic president Egypt had ever seen was ousted by the military.

Today, meaningful opposition is virtually non-existent, and Egypt's current president rules the country in an increasingly authoritarian manner.

But the exception seems to be Tunisia.

Tunisia is often regarded as the only democracy that emerged from the Arab Spring.

In 2011, a moderate Islamist party won the elections.

In the following two years, protests broke out for and against a more conservative religious government, and internal challenges persisted.

But in 2014, they adopted a new constitution.

And in 2021, that same constitution was dissolved, and its new president started ruling by decree.

Today, there exists deep uncertainty about the future of Tunisia's democracy.

Egypt brought down one autocratic ruler and replaced him with another.

Syria, Libya, and Yemen spiraled into a civil war, while other countries appear to have not been affected at all.

Optimistic scholars attribute reforms in Saudi Arabia that allow women to vote and drive to a changed mindset that was caused by the Arab Spring.

Autocrats across the Arab world saw the need to attend societal challenges and improve their quality of governance.

The consequences, if they don't comply, have been clearly demonstrated.

You don't change the world in a day.

And maybe it takes more than a decade.

Why stop learning now?

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