Design: Bronte Dow
Ten years ago, a wave of popular uprisings erupted across the Middle East, threatening not only local monarchs and dictators but the strategic interests of the Western powers that backed them. In this series, David Wearing looks back on these events, their causes and consequences, and asks what they can teach us about the nature of imperialism in the twenty-first century.
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The Arab uprisings arrived in earnest in Syria ten years ago this week, with large demonstrations marking the culmination of weeks of brewing unrest. What followed was one of the worst conflicts and humanitarian disasters of the modern era. But while the sheer scale of the catastrophe was almost unique (save for the current war in Yemen), the key factors at play were the same here as elsewhere in the region.