[4] The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid to late 2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities,[5][6][7] pro-government militias, counterdemonstrators, and militaries.

[60] During the Arab Spring, people created pages on Facebook to raise awareness about alleged crimes against humanity, such as police brutality in the Egyptian Revolution (see Wael Ghonim and Death of Khaled Mohamed Saeed).

Jared Keller, a journalist for The Atlantic, claims that most activists and protesters used Facebook (among other social media) to organize; however, what influenced Iran was "good old-fashioned word of mouth".

The security forces faced strong opposition from some young Sahrawi civilians, and rioting soon spread to El Aaiún and other towns within the territory, resulting in an unknown number of injuries and deaths.

His death on 4 January 2011[75] brought together various groups dissatisfied with the existing system, including many unemployed persons, political and human rights activists, labor and trade unionists, students, professors, lawyers, and others to begin the Tunisian Revolution.

[119] Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo award for his image of a Yemeni woman holding an injured family member, taken during the civil uprising in Yemen on 15 October 2011.

[212]: 132 [216] King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared a three-month state of emergency on 15 March and asked the military to reassert its control as clashes spread across the country.

[235] Although the report found that systematic torture had stopped,[212]: 417  the Bahraini government has refused entry to several international human rights groups and news organizations, and delayed a visit by a UN inspector.

[240] Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia and prior to his entry as a central figure in Egyptian politics, potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei warned of a "Tunisia-style explosion" in Egypt.

The founder of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC believed that even ten years after the Arab Spring, Egypt was at its lowest for human rights.

[254] Amidst ongoing efforts by demonstrators and rebel forces to wrest control of Tripoli from the Jamahiriya, the opposition set up an interim government in Benghazi to oppose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's rule.

[259][260] However, Sabha fell in late September,[261] Bani Walid was captured after a grueling siege weeks later,[262] and on 20 October, fighters under the aegis of the National Transitional Council seized Sirte, killing Gaddafi in the process.

[266] Thousands of protesters gathered in Damascus, Aleppo, al-Hasakah, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hama on 15 March,[267][268] with recently released politician Suhair Atassi becoming an unofficial spokesperson for the "Syrian revolution".

As another rebel coalition advanced towards Damascus, reports emerged that Bashar al-Assad fled the capital aboard a plane to Russia, where he joined his family, already in exile, and was granted asylum.

[287][288] As a result of continued daily protests, on 27 January Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi reshuffled the government, removing all former RCD members other than himself, and on 6 February the former ruling party was suspended;[289] later, on 9 March, it was dissolved.

Protests continued over the following months, especially in the three major cities, and briefly intensified in late May into urban warfare between Hashid tribesmen and army defectors allied with the opposition on one side and security forces and militias loyal to Saleh on the other.

[323] After Saleh pretended to accept a Gulf Cooperation Council-brokered plan allowing him to cede power in exchange for immunity from prosecution only to back away before signing three separate times,[324][325] an assassination attempt on 3 June left him and several other high-ranking Yemeni officials injured by a blast in the presidential compound's mosque.

[326] Saleh was evacuated to Saudi Arabia for treatment and handed over power to Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who largely continued his policies[327] and ordered the arrest of several Yemenis in connection with the attack on the presidential compound.

[326] While in Saudi Arabia, Saleh kept hinting that he could return any time and continued to be present in the political sphere through television appearances from Riyadh starting with an address to the Yemeni people on 7 July.

Elsewhere, most notably in the monarchies of Morocco and the Persian Gulf, existing regimes co-opted the Arab Spring movement and managed to maintain order without significant social change.

Countries with stronger civil society networks in various forms underwent more successful reforms during the Arab Spring; these findings are also consistent with more general social science theories such as those espoused by Robert D. Putnam and Joel S.

[358] Some trends in political Islam resulting from the Arab Spring noted by observers (Quinn Mecham and Tarek Osman) include: "The repercussions of the 2011 uprisings have influenced Middle Eastern youth's experiences providing impetus for questioning perennial sacred beliefs and positions, and forging ahead avant-garde views and responses to the constraints they face.

"[21] Contrary to the common discourse, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley from The New Yorker argue that the divide in the post–Arab Spring in the Middle East is not sectarianism: The bloodiest, most vicious, and most pertinent struggles occur squarely inside the Sunni world.

The "select rich urban bourgeoisie, the Sunni Damascene in particular", according to Tokyo University researcher Housam Darwisheh, "now has a direct interest in preserving stability and their relations with the regime as long as their businesses prosper.

[380] Two months into the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, The Economist magazine in a leader article spoke about a new generation of young people, idealists, "inspired by democracy", which made revolutions.

The Arab revolutions, argues Bayat, "lacked any associated intellectual anchor" and the predominant voices, "secular and Islamists alike, took free market, property relations, and neoliberal rationality for granted" and uncritically.

[385] Wael Ghonim, an Internet activist who would later gain an international fame, acknowledged that what he had intended by founding a Facebook page was a "simple reaction to the events in Tunisia" and that "there was no master plans or strategies" a priori.

Hall, with her focus on the muhammashīn (the marginalized) in Yemen, described how in the 1990s and 2000s international NGOs established charity projects and workshops "to teach slum dwellers new skills and behaviours".

Kabalan concluded: There seems to be a concerted effort to establish a crescent of military-ruled countries from Sudan in northeast Africa to Algeria in the northwest through Egypt and Libya to ward off popular upheaval and keep "Islamist" forces in check.

[406]Analyst H. A. Hellyer attributes the persistence of autocracy and dictatorship, as well as counter-revolution, to structures that go back to colonialism - and also to the forms that states in the MENA region took in the postcolonial era and the social pacts established in the process.