Throughout the year of 2019, people took to the streets all around the world – including in West Asia and North Africa. We asked activists from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Algeria how they perceive the protests in their neighboring countries.

INTERVIEW BY
Ansar Jasim, Schluwa Sama, Jan Altaner

Adel Abdel-Mahdi became the most recent example for change caused by the recent protests that challenged the political status quo in North Africa and West Asia. Abdel-Mahdi resigned from his mandate as the Prime Minister of Iraq in the end of November, after Algeria’s long term ruler Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Sudan’s dictator Omar al-Bashir were already forced to step down earlier this year.

In Lebanon thousands have taken to the streets in the past months protesting against corruption and an elite that failed to provide basic public infrastructure. In Iran, nationwide protests have been brutally put down and the country’s internet has been shut down repeatedly. In year nine of Syria’s civil war there are still pockets of active civil society where people fight for democratic self-governance, despite the bombing by Syria’s dictator Bashir Al-Assad, Russia, Iran, and Turkey.

Is there a common ground between these protests? Has the new generation of activists learned from the revolutions that swept the region almost ten years ago? In which ways do activists perceive the protests in their neighboring countries? These are some of the questions we have asked activists from Iraq, (North-Eastern) Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Algeria.

“We are all facing the same system.”

Sami Adnan, 28 – political activist from Baghdad and founder of the group “Workers against Sectarianism“ which is actively involved in the current protests in Iraq……………………

Read more about it from the source: disorient