Transitions in the Middle East: The Arabian spring with focus on Libya

Abstract

According to the mass media, the Arabian spring, a series of revolutions in the Arabian countries, which originally started in Tunisia back in December 2010, then spread to Egypt and Libya in February 2011, and later on to other Arabian countries like Syria and Yemen, started as a genuine grass-root-movement due to serious human right violations. In the first half of 2014, a survey was conducted in Libya to find out how people in Libya who experienced the Arabian Spring perceived the situation before and after the Arabian Spring. The survey revealed that the Arabian Spring movement indeed started as a grass-root- movement, because people in Libya were dissatisfied with the situation in their country due to high unemployment and the wrong people in high positions but was hijacked later on by Western powers. In sum, the overwhelming majority of participants had the impression that the situation in Libya deteriorated after the Arabian Spring.