Coronavirus Blunts Momentum of Second Arab Spring
The restive public squares of the Middle East and North Africa have gone quiet, as activists ponder their next move.
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Photographer: Murtadha Al-Sudani/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Will the coronavirus crisis do for the Second Arab Spring what the forces of counterrevolution did for the first? Today is the first Friday since October that the public squares of the Middle East and North Africa will be silent.
In Iraq, the antigovernment protests that have wracked the country for nearly six months were called off last week, when organizers bowed to the inevitable consequence of the pandemic. The Iraqis were only a few days behind the Algerian popular movement, known as Hirak, that ended a year-long streak of Friday protests on March 20. In Lebanon, the virus scare seems to have shut down the anticorruption demonstrations that had previously resisted intimidation from Hezbollah thugs.