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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ten years ago, a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire and set off a revolution across the Middle East and North Africa. The Independent's Borzou Daragahi says the Arab Spring never ended.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique. Fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe. Expose corruption wherever we find it. And give fresh perspective on everything. From wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Read, watch, and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One day in December of 2010, December 17th, a young fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in central Tunisia got into a spat with a cop and the cop ordered him to close his fruit vending stand and he poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire in just sort of abject desperation at his plight and he didn't die right away he lingered on for weeks.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: But his plight and what he did inspired protests across Tunisia. They kept growing and growing and growing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The president of Tunisia back then, a thug named Zinabeddin Ben Ali, he tried to placate the people. He made speeches. He visited Mohamed Bouazizi in the hospital.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: That picture was shocking. You could see nothing of Bouazizi. He was surrounded by band-aids like a mummy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Eventually, Mohamed Bouazizi died from his injuries, and the revolution grew in Tunisia, and eventually the military pulled the plug on him. They refused to intervene in protests. He fled to Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: I think like the majority of the Tunisian people, we were in disbelief. It was the first time an Arab dictator had been toppled by his own people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that was it. That was the sort of spark. That was the first actual revolution, popular uprising in the Arab world in memory.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: You know, like not a coup, not a sort of palace machination, not a foreign invasion, but actual people's uprising leading to the ouster of a dictatorship.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then 11 days later, there was a call for protests in Cairo, in Egypt. demanding freedom, justice, and bread.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: On coinciding with police day, it was a day of protests that no one thought would amount to much.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even the people who were involved in it were doubtful that people would turn out, but it just caught like wildfire.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: People are gathering in the largest demonstrations against President Hassan Mubarak.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Al-Shaab, you read Isqat al-Nidham, or the people demand the fall of the regime.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: And that was really when it captured the imagination of the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Listeners will recall the Tahrir Square uprising in central Cairo, where the protesters took control of the center of the city.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: There were days and days of protests, and eventually...
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In these difficult circumstances that the country is passing through, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down from his post as president of the republic.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: The military pulled the plug on him, and he resigned from office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Listen to that crowd. That's what they've been waiting for.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: Hosni Mubarak has gone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The whole idea of Egyptians just being submissive and worshipping their Pharaoh, all this, it's just, you know, no one can ever, ever see this again.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: I am so proud. I am so proud.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that really inspired revolutions across North Africa and other parts of the Middle East.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: Eventually you had uprisings in Libya. A year ago, protesters in the eastern port of Benghazi called for a day of rage against the rule of dictator Manwar Gaddafi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yemen. Hundreds of anti-government demonstrators have marched through the Yemeni capsule of Sanaa to call on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: Bahrain. Sen al-Abidin down. Mubarak down. Al Khalifa down, down, down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In Syria, a month later, in March of 2011. Residents there are unfazed in their attempt to rid themselves of President Bashar al-Assad's government.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: You had protest movements in Morocco. In the capital Rabat, at least 4,000 turned out to call on King Mohammed to give up some of his powers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Along with constitutional reforms, they want political prisoners released and a clampdown on government corruption.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: You had calls for change in Saudi Arabia, and many people forget about that, in the United Arab Emirates even.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this was a, you know, this was a tidal wave across the Arab world.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: And even, people won't remember this, but I remember this, even in Iran, which is not part of the Arab world, but part of the Middle East, there was protests in solidarity with the protesters of the Arab Spring against the regime in Tehran for months and months after what happened here.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Mariam al-Khawaja, and I am a human race defender from Bahrain.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: We started organizing as soon as Tunisia and Egypt happened. We started organizing and pushing for people to, and campaigning to push for people to take to the streets in Bahrain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I took part in the uprising, witnessed quite a bit of horrific violence from the government towards the protesters.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: And towards the end of February, I left the country to testify in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council and to do several talks before what I thought was going back to Bahrain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But of course, by that point, the more heavy-handed crackdown had started.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: The Saudi troops and the Emirati troops had already arrived in Bahrain, and the crackdown where thousands of people were arrested and tortured began, including my father, my brother-in-law, some of my cousins, my uncle, and so on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I realized that at that point I could not go back.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: All of these different uprisings had very similar reasons for why people took to the streets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in Bahrain, it was no different.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: It started out with people demanding the implementation of the promise that the self-acclaimed king had made in 2001, which was the restoration of the 1973 constitution, which gives people a real parliament.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And once they started killing people on the streets for making that demand, the demand changed to regime change, as it did with many other movements in the region.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: I think one of the things that's very frustrating about the 10-year anniversary is that we continue 10 years later to have prisoners of conscience who are in prison for almost 10 years now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My father will have been in prison for 10 years in April, who were severely tortured. who continue to be harassed and intimidated and abused in prison.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: And unfortunately, the international community has not stepped up in its responsibility and its role to provide an adequate response for the protection and promotion of human rights as they say they should, especially for countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where because they are allied with the United States, because they are allied with the United Kingdom, they pretty much get a blank check when it comes to accountability or rather lack thereof.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so my father was sentenced to life, along with several others under so anti charges which of course has been used as a tool to target human rights defenders and civil society across the region and beyond since the so-called war on terror that was started by the United States.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: Those are, that's basically the reason my father sits in a prison cell today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, it's a really dark situation right now.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: And, you know, I just have to say one caveat. It's like a dark situation everywhere in the world right now, regardless, just because of the, I mean, unless you're in like Australia or New Zealand, it is not a fun time these days.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's hard to tell where the misery over the Arab Spring starts and where the misery over like COVID and economic collapse starts.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: But in general, the situation in the Arab world, in these countries that, you know, experienced a revolution, even in Tunisia, which is sort of billed as the success story of the Arab Spring, because it didn't end up in either a military dictatorship or a civil war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's widespread discontent.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: And, you know, if you Google it on the news right now, you'll find word of protests in Tunisia to this day right now, big protests against the government, against corruption and against police brutality, which is the sort of sad part.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They haven't overcome that.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: And then it just goes down from there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You look at Libya, civil war and separation.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: You look at Syria, just a nightmare scenario of the dictatorship on the one side and chaos on the other.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yemen, civil war.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: Egypt, military dictatorship.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Gulf states, tightening authoritarianism.
--:-- Mariam al-Khawaja: You know, just like very little signs of hope in the Arab world right now.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Mohamed Ali Abdullah. I am the senior advisor for the internationally recognized government in Libya for U.S. affairs.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: My overall feeling is a sense of disappointment, frustration, because I think a lot of us were falsely expecting the change to be a lot easier than what it's proven to be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is a lot more difficult to govern than it is to be in the opposition.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: I've come to learn that, you know, the objective behind change sometimes unifies people just because the enemy or the, you know, the obstacle in front of us is the same.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: However, the intents and the purpose behind driving for that change is always different.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And that comes to surface, you know, once the change is done, you know, people meet at a crossroads to where you find yourself aligned with people that you normally wouldn't have been and vice versa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One simple example for where that's really been a test is that one of the reasons why we objected and were opposed to Gaddafi was for the widespread corruption and dysfunctional form of government that he was running.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: After the revolution, a lot of the same individuals who were believers in this opposition to Gaddafi took part in the systematic corruption.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As a matter of fact, tenfold the level of corruption that we saw during the Qadhafi regime was carried out by those who were at one point were his opposers.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: It's a test.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I find myself today aligned with individuals who actually worked with the Qadhafi regime and were a part of his government just because I've learned that these individuals are actually aiming for, you know, have the same end game.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: They have the same objective. They have the same will to be able to drive and achieve a better life for Libyans and a stable Libya, a fair and just Libya that provides its citizens a better quality of life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I got to say, from my point of view, as someone who, you know, sort of spoke with and befriended these people, I lived in Egypt for four years after the uprising there and, you know, kind of hung out with these people a lot.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And it's really sad, you know, like a lot of them are in exile. Many of them are in jail.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like all the people that I know who are like among the Islamists who took part in the revolution and some of whom became part of the government later, they're in jail or in exile.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And then, you know, there's really, really sad and like really traumatic cases.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like there was a woman, Razan Zaytuna, who was a Syrian activist, who I spoke with at one point almost like every other week on Skype from Syria.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And it's really terrifying. No one knows what happened to her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She just disappeared off the face of the earth one day.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: This was a dynamic person. This was a very vocal person, very educated person, very active and smart person who was dedicated to the cause of Syria and, you know, freedom for Syrians and democracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she was just one day abducted by gunmen.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And we don't know what happened to her to this day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know this isn't binary, but all told, does the fact that there hasn't been dramatic, lasting, positive change across the region mean that this movement that, you know, caught the entire world's attention and seemed so unprecedented at the time failed?
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: Well, I think that in many respects, it's too early to say, you know, I mean, that sounds cheap and easy to say, but it's still unfolding.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in many respects, what happened in 2011, those revolutions, it's still playing out.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: If you look at the Middle East and North Africa geopolitically, the kind of structures, the axes that were formed because of the Arab Spring are continuing to wrestle with each other.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so you have this axis of conservative autocratic regimes that includes Egypt's government, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Khalifa Hefter in Libya, you know, this sort of warlord in eastern Libya, fighting against this Islamist populist axis that includes Turkey and the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar and the government in western Libya.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And a few other parties.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you have Iran and Syria and Hezbollah and so on.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And so all these forces are still fighting it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And meanwhile, you have these aspirations on the part of people that are continuing and you still have massive uprisings.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: Let's not forget that we had a year or two of major protests in Sudan, which is also part of the Arab world, in Algeria, the longtime ruler of Algeria was toppled, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and, you know, still playing out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You've had protests in Iraq. You've had protests in Lebanon.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And all of these incorporated the themes of that Arab spring uprising in 2011.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Many of the ideals were expressed, many of the tactics were used and so on.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: So I would say that it's just a long way of saying that it's just still too early to say it was a failure.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is an evolution and there's a lot of pain and trauma, maybe a lot more pain and trauma that the people expected that were involved in the initial uprisings and definitely a lot more pain and trauma that journalists and political scientists were expecting when this first erupted.
--:-- Mohamed Ali Abdullah: And it's been a learning experience for the people of the region and it's been a learning experience for people watching the region.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Ramy Asam, I'm an Egyptian artist living in exile.
--:-- Ramy Asam: Before the revolution I had my political songs, but I was just saying it between my friends and my family and in very, very small kind of events, but nothing was big before the revolution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when Revolution started, the first day I joined Tahrir Square.
--:-- Ramy Asam: Luckily, I took the guitar with me because in the beginning I was afraid to take the guitar because the days before that was a bloody fight, very violent fight with the police.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there was no chance for any music or guitar and I was afraid about my guitar.
--:-- Ramy Asam: But my brother and my friends just pushed me to take it because they knew of the songs that I had from before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was no stage, so I was just singing between the people, between the tents and in the streets and for sure also I started to make songs that came from the revolution directly especially like the song irhal which means leave.
--:-- Ramy Asam: The concept of irhal was about how to take the chance that people are already using in the streets and turn them into melody turn them into song
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I was listening to the chants and they took the main three chants at the time which was Down, down, Hosni Mubarak.
--:-- Ramy Asam: Shab, you read, is caught in his own. People demand removal of the regime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He leaves, we stay.
--:-- Ramy Asam: And then I wrote an extra line and was saying, We are all one hand, have one demand, leave.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The song Irhal, Leave, was an anthem for us at that moment.
--:-- Ramy Asam: And I performed Irhal, Leave, first time I was on the stage in Tahi Square.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was the best moment of my life.
--:-- Ramy Asam: And it was extremely beautiful.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft, up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
--:-- Ramy Asam: Plus, they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can work on your financial goals through Chime today.
--:-- Ramy Asam: You can open an account in two minutes at Chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's Chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Ramy Asam: Chime feels like progress.
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--:-- Ramy Asam: Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA. Salt Lake City Branch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Terms and more at AppleCard.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Borzu Deragahi, you've been covering the Arab Spring for 10 years, and you just said before the break that this is all still unfolding.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: Where does it go next?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: First of all, I would say that we're talking about multiple societies with various dynamics, you know, and each one of these countries, like the situation in Sudan is way different than the situation in like Lebanon, than the situation in Egypt.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: They have different histories and different trajectories and different aspirations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you have like, you know, these wild exceptional stories like Algeria, which has got like this incredible story that is unique in the world, is having once been part of France, it was once a department of France, and then it got its independence.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: So it has a very different growing pains to go through.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I think that, you know, barring ecological catastrophe that could destroy all of us, you know, these countries are moving along and developing their capacities for civil societies and governance and so on, and eventually moving towards a more pluralistic models, not because they're, you know, based on some kind of ideals or idealization of models in the West, but just because there's like little choice for these countries.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: They can remain these autocracies mired in corruption and exclusion and exclusivity in terms of the elite, or they can sort of survive and give everyone in the country a stake in the systems that they have in place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think that, you know, eventually, slowly, these countries are moving in the right direction.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: And this process of democratization, this process of pluralizing and opening the political systems, it just seems to be a lot more painful in the Middle East and North Africa than it was in Latin America or Far East Asia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do you think the Arab Spring proved?
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: I mean, it proved that contrary to what a lot of bigots and racists, what we call in the Middle East, the Orientalists were saying, these people who live in these parts of the world, they don't like living under autocracy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is not cool to live under the rule of one family or one king and so on.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: And there is this sort of prejudice in the West that people are in the Middle East, live in this situation and live under these autocracies because that's the way they like it and there's no other way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, as it turns out, in fact, there's a significant, very significant portion of these populations that really don't like it.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: And I would say that the people are wise to some extent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when they see that achieving that pluralistic model right the second would cost a lot in blood, and they decide sometimes that they don't want to go forward.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: And I think that's a legitimate calculation when, for example, in certain countries, you go forward and you try to make a change and you see the response of the security forces and the response of the security forces is utterly brutal and horrific, and you decide, no, that's not worth it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that's a sign of maturity that we should respect.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: My name is Emel. I'm a singer-songwriter from New York, Paris, and Tunis.
--:-- Emel: I mean, my generation, we've only known dictatorship.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was born in the 80s, so we grew up under the dictatorship.
--:-- Emel: So everything was made for us to become dumb and not think and not voice any opinion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Dictatorship is very deep.
--:-- Emel: I mean, it might seem funny, but actually dictatorship does things in a way where they do not want to form thinking people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They just want puppets that they can control and that can be scared.
--:-- Emel: And unfortunately, that was my generation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I'm not scared to say it, but I'm seeing that actually the new generation that is more informed, that had more access to, you know, like social media, they're seeing what good things are.
--:-- Emel: They're seeing what the other countries are.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they know what they want and they do not want their country to be what it used to be and what it's looking now.
--:-- Emel: They know what's good for them and they know where they want to go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I feel like a little bit more than us.
--:-- Emel: So if this isn't over, what needs to happen for the sort of dreams and ideals of the Arab Spring to ultimately be realized?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I think that, you know, first of all, one thing that would be super awesome is if, you know, countries like the United States, United Kingdom and France and Germany and so on would just stop selling weapons to these people.
--:-- Emel: Stop selling them the instruments of repression.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That includes like tear gas, police equipment, surveillance equipment, electronic stuff.
--:-- Emel: I mean, we're not only not helping in some respects. In the West, we're actually actively supporting these autocratic regimes as they, you know, use the most advanced weaponry and crowd control mechanisms and surveillance technologies to repress their own people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There a big debate about whether Obama or Trump or now Biden should call for support for democratic movements in these countries and so on
--:-- Emel: It's less important that you call for support or what you say than what you permit to be sold to these countries.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think that would be a great step on the part of the world is to stop selling repressive regimes, tools for repression.
--:-- Emel: And also, having lived in these countries now for almost 20 years, I can tell you that when the US or the UK or the French or the German embassy invites members of civil society for a lunch or for a conference and so on, it really makes a difference.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think under Trump, that just completely stopped.
--:-- Emel: There was no more outreach to dissidents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was no more, you know, kind of cultivating communications with opposition groups and so on in places like Egypt or Lebanon and so on.
--:-- Emel: It was like a lot of support for autocratic regimes and less support and less encouragement for our like-minded folks in these parts of the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And do you see that changing?
--:-- Emel: I can't name names and I don't want to get into, I don't want to get anyone into trouble, but like, you know, I know that these diplomats themselves, our diplomats, are decent people who have been eager to support like-minded movements in these countries.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that under Biden and Blinken, there's all sorts of the correct signals.
--:-- Emel: I think that it's super interesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know if listeners will know about this, but Joseph Biden during the campaign called for like a democracy conference later this year where, you know, this sort of like-minded democracies would get together in an effort to reinvigorate the idea of democratic pluralism around the world.
--:-- Emel: And I think that's a really interesting idea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that will give a big boost to these groups and these figures who are fighting for democracy in these very tough environments.
--:-- Emel: And you know, I mean it'll be a much better than under Trump, I mean he was like basically coddling the worst dictators in the region, he was you know, I mean he called sisi who is an absolute tyrant who has turned egypt into a more brutal dictatorship than it has ever been since world war ii, he called him his favorite dictator, he like fetted him in the white house, you know, I mean I don't think any U.S. president has done that, has embraced so brutal a dictator so warmly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that anything is better than what we just had over the last four years.
--:-- Emel: But as you said near the top of our conversation, it's hard to tell where the pain in the region begins. Right now, yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And where the hardship over the economy or the pandemic in this particular moment starts.
--:-- Emel: Do the people you talk to who are actually involved in this movement, do they still feel...
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely. They're absolutely defiant.
--:-- Emel: My name is Mona Al-Tahawi. I'm an Egyptian-American feminist and writer of Feminist Giant Newsletter.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: I was born in Egypt and I moved to the U.S. in 2000.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I've been moving back and forth between Egypt and the U.S. since then.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: My relationship to the uprisings and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa is that they were my dream and the dream of so many of us for all our lives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when the revolution began in Egypt, I was in my mid-40s and I thought, ah, finally.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: So when I myself went and joined the revolution in Egypt in November of 2011, Egyptian riot police broke my left arm, my right hand, and they sexually assaulted me.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And their supervising officer threatened to have me gang raped.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: And I was held incommunicado by the interior ministry for six hours and by military intelligence for another six hours, during which they blindfolded me and interrogated me and denied me medical attention.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What happened to me there really changed my life because it made me determined to move back to Egypt to fight the regime in a much more direct way and to signal to the regime that did that to me that they had not terrorized me away from my country above.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: So I moved back to Egypt to directly confront the regime and to become more involved with feminist activism on the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then also what happened to me and how the revolution changed me was that it made me even more of a feminist than I was when it began.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: Because if you ask me now, what has the revolution achieved in Egypt besides getting rid of Hosni Mubarak?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's that it has gone home.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: And in the same way that we said no to Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir Square, we have been saying no to Mubarak in the home and Mubarak in the street and Mubarak in the workplace and the Mubarak in the mosque, the Mubarak in the church.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically, the revolution now has become a revolution of saying no to all forms of authority.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: And that, for me, is the biggest indication that the revolution is working.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, there's a few people who were not involved in the protests who were on the sidelines who say oh it was better back then you know.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: Let me give you an example, okay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I was in Tunisia just before the pandemic and I was talking to people was it worth it and they're like you know the moaning what the situation is talking about the economy how hard it is and so on and I'm like yeah but was it worth it was the revolution worth it and they're like you know what as bad as things are right now, at least we can talk about it.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: Like before we couldn't even talk about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's not even imaginable anymore that we would be in that situation anymore.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: Like I did a story when I was at BuzzFeed. It was a story about a guy who was accused of being a jihadi by the cops.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he wasn't, but the cops kept hassling him and hassling him and hassling him.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: And he was saying, you know, under the former regime, I would be hassled too, but then I would just be thrown into jail and so on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But now I have a lawyer and I'm talking to international media about it and I'm fighting against it.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: And I wouldn't even be able to imagine that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So as bad as things are right now, it's unimaginable that we would ever go back.
--:-- Mona Al-Tahawi: So I think that the region has changed the expectations have changed the discourse has completely transformed people have gotten more sophisticated politically they talk about their political situation in a much different way in a much more enlightened way a much more with a much more sophisticated vocabulary, and there's no putting genie back in the bottle, so to speak.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Borzu Deragahi is an international correspondent at The Independent.
--:-- Borzou Daragahi: You can find his work at theindependent.co.uk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained.
--:-- [Theme music fades in]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The team includes Muj Zaydi, Amna Alsadi, Will Reed, Halima Shah, Noam Hassenfeld, and Cecilia Lay, who joined us for Real this week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're very happy to have her.
--:-- [Music transitions to a gentle background hum]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Afim Shapiro is the show's engineer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Extra help this week from Jillian Weinberger.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can get in touch with us on Twitter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The show's at today, underscore explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm at Ramas Firm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our email is today explained at box.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you want to rate or review us wherever you listen, they say it helps other people find the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks as always for sharing the show with the people you know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Transcription by CastingWords.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you.
--:-- [Theme music fades out]
