A decade ago the people of Bahrain took to the streets to call for democracy. However, 10 years on, the pro-democracy movement has been crushed as the world looks on. Alex MacDonald has this story in the Middle East Eye:

In his recent book A Promised Land, former US president Barack Obama reflects on his time as leader of the free world at a moment when the Middle East was erupting in a cascade of demonstrations that would come to be known as the Arab Spring.

In the book, Obama discusses how he tried to ease Hosni Mubarak out of Egypt as the 2011 uprisings seemed poised to topple his administration, despite the autocrat’s well-established relationship with the US. After Mubarak’s removal, Obama notes that he was “cautiously optimistic” about the country’s future.

With two more countries engulfed by the Arab Spring, Libya and Syria, he was more forthright, launching or threatening to launch military interventions to remove their long-standing autocrats. In another, Yemen, he helped oversee a transition to remove another ailing administration.

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