Category Archives: Arab and Middle East unrest

The Guardian view on Algeria’s ousted president: what next? | Editorial

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Protesters have forced the departure of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. But that may prove to be the easy part

The scenes of jubilation on the streets of Algeria on Tuesday night had vivid, almost uncanny echoes of events in the region eight years ago. A wave of protest in a youthful country has ousted an ageing, authoritarian leader who clung to power for years, at the head of a regime perpetuating a clientelist and unequal economy. The ailing 82-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, finally succumbed after weeks of protests, sparked by the announcement of his candidacy for a fifth term despite reports that he struggled even to speak.

The country’s oil wealth is drying up, reducing the government’s ability to temper popular discontent via state spending; over a quarter of its youth are unemployed; corruption is endemic. But it was the regime’s sheer contempt for its citizens in nominating a man who has barely been seen in public since a 2013 stroke, and the sense of national humiliation, which brought hundreds of thousands on to the streets. Those behind him hope that his departure will allow them to continue as before. Their opponents, now emboldened by victory, demand real change.

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Bouteflika’s departure is just the beginning of Algeria’s struggle | Simon Tisdall

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Protesters hail president’s downfall but oligarchic, elitist governmental system remains

The reluctant resignation of Algeria’s veteran president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was greeted with noisy celebrations by street protesters who spent weeks demanding his departure. But his premature downfall after 20 years in power does not signify the end of the Algerian revolt. It may be just the beginning.

Now the next phase begins – a struggle to overthrow the country’s oligarchic, elitist governmental system and not merely its elderly figurehead. Under current rules, Algeria faces a 90-day transition period until a new president is elected. There is already confusion over what should happen next.

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Is Algeria on the cusp of freedom, or does Bouteflika have one last play?

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President’s promise of ‘deep reforms’ has calmed protests but may not be the end of the crisis

In the first line of Abdulaziz Bouteflika’s letter to the nation on Monday night, the Algerian president said the country was living through a sensitive stage of its history. On this, at least he and his compatriots are agreed.

The 82-year-old politician, who has had a series of strokes that have left him in poor health, has been in power since 1999. The announcement that he would not be seeking a further five-year term caused widespread celebration. This was the principal demand of the hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – who marched peacefully through cities and towns across Algeria on Friday in protests on a scale not seen for decades.

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The Guardian view on the Israeli elections: Netanyahu debases his office – again | Editorial

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Next month’s poll is a referendum on a prime minister who has triumphed by fuelling divisions

Israel is not a state of all its citizens, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu declared on Sunday. His words should be shocking, but in truth they made explicit the message of last year’s nation state law, rendering Palestinians in Israel second-class citizens. They would be shameful if he were capable of shame. Mr Netanyahu’s campaign for re-election in the face of a bribery and fraud indictment shows he is not. He has prospered by fostering division.

This latest act of cynical bigotry is simply par for the course. The same is true of Mr Netanyahu’s awful turn to far-right parties for support. Mr Netanyahu orchestrated the merger of the racist anti-Arab Jewish Power and the pro-settler Jewish Home parties to help them pass the electoral threshold and him put together a coalition. Jewish Power includes followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was outlawed in Israel and is designated by the US and EU as a terror organisation.

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Algerian protesters plan more action and call for regime change

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Democracy movement Mouwatana opposes president Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term

The coordinator of protests sweeping across Algeria for the past week has called for wholesale regime change as tens of thousands are expected to take to the streets on Friday.

“What Algerians want is to get rid of not just the president, but the entire regime,” said Soufiane Djilali, who spearheads the Mouwatana (Democracy and Citizenship) movement, which organised some of the historic protests against the current ruler, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. “The president must go, the government must resign, and the fake national assembly – all these need to be dismantled,” he said.

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The collapse of Isis will inflame the regional power struggle

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From Russia to Turkey and Iraq, the rout of the caliphate brings new political considerations and shifting alliances

The collapse of the Isis caliphate’s last stronghold in Syria is sending shockwaves across the region, changing the calculations of the major powers as they jockey for advantage. Triumphalism in Washington, Moscow and Damascus risks obscuring the human cost of a “victory” that may quickly prove transitory.

Of immediate concern is the fate of civilians, mainly women and children, displaced from formerly Isis-controlled areas where many were held against their will. The independent International Rescue Committee says up to 4,000 people are fleeing towards the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria.

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Will corruption, cuts and protest produce a new Arab spring?

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In Sudan, Egypt and beyond, unrest is growing and hardline dictators are ill-equipped to respond

Sudan missed out on the Arab spring, but that may be changing. Protests against Omar al-Bashir, the indicted war criminal who has dominated the country for 29 years, are becoming a daily occurrence. Street-level unrest, sparked by rising bread and fuel prices, began last month and spread quickly. But the focus of demonstrators, their ranks swollen by teachers, lawyers and doctors, has switched to Bashir himself. They want him gone.

Bashir’s response has been predictably repressive. And the president may succeed in battering his critics into silence, as in the past. But the causes of the unrest cannot be bludgeoned away: a struggling economy, low investment, high unemployment, corruption, bad governance and a potentially disastrous lack of opportunity for new generations of young people.

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Beyond Syria: the Arab Spring’s aftermath

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The outlook is bleak for key countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya

Just over eight years ago, Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a bitter one-man protest outside a government office against the government. Within hours, demonstrators took to the streets of his small town, Sidi Bouzid. By the time he died in hospital just overtwo weeks later, protests had spread across the country, would soon topple the president and spill beyond Tunisia, in a regional convulsion dubbed the Arab Spring.

Related: Syria: Assad has decisively won his brutal battle

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