Middle East

Ten years ago I watched as protesters toppled Egypt's brutal regime. Now their hopes of a new era of freedom lie in tatters

February 11, 2021. Summarized by summa-bot.

Compression ratio: 25.9%. 1 min read.

Hala Gorani is the anchor of CNN International's "Hala Gorani Tonight." She reported from Egypt during the Arab Spring of 2011, and was the host of "Inside the Middle East" on CNN International.

Hala Gorani is the anchor of CNN International's "Hala Gorani Tonight. " She reported from Egypt during the Arab Spring of 2011, and was the host of "Inside the Middle East" on CNN International.

A few days after the revolutionary high of the 2011 anti-regime protests in Cairo, demanding the resignation of then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the mood had shifted.

Soon after, the New York Times columnist Nick Kristof told me some journalists were changing the names they checked in with, so that any thugs coming into the hotel demanding guest lists wouldn't know which rooms the foreign press were in.

That night, we broadcast CNN's special coverage from the floor of a hotel room.

Lost -- crushed even -- in this tragic story are the original protesters, who dreamed of a democracy that would represent them.

In the first few weeks of the uprising, journalists like us shared in their optimism: Could this be really the moment the Arab world would, slowly and painfully, evolve into a system that serves its own people, rather than the unelected autocrats who had drained their countries dry for decades?

In Syria, the regime crushed its own citizens' cry for democracy with such brutality that peaceful protesters were quickly replaced by extremist rebels, fighting a government backed by outside forces for control of a shattered land.

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