Tha Arab Summer

The self-immolation of Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, on 17 December 2010 triggered the Arab Spring.

The 26 year-old street vendor was driven to take his own life in such a horrific fashion out of despair at his experience of grinding poverty and relentless police harrassment. His death caused a wave of anger and revulsion amongst the Tunisian population and, on 14 January 2011, the country's President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, was forced to step down and fled into exile. The unrest spread throughout the Arab world, triggering the overthrow of several despotic regimes and seeming to hold out the prospect of widespread democratisation. Sadly, but perhaps predictably, the movement was stifled through a combination of vicious state crackdowns and Western unwillingness to upset the status quo in a strategically critical region. A combination of self-interest, complicity and indifference on the part of Western powers effectively snuffed out the movement and, in 2012, the uprising was over.

The Republic of Tunisia, ethnically Amarzigh or Berber rather than Arab, is nevertheless culturally and linguistically Arabised and a member of the Arab League. Its similarly Arabised North African neighbours are the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria and the Kingdom of Morocco to the west, and the State of Libya (currently split between two rival administrations), and the Arab Republic of Egypt, to the east.

Since the NATO-led military intervention in Libya in 2011, which led to the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and the collapse of the Arab Spring the following year, international attention has tended to focus on the Middle East but developments in the past two days on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco - specifically the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla - has caused a sudden refocusing. 

These two North African Spanish territories have largely escaped international notice over the years whereas Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory on the European side of the Pillars of Hercules, has commanded much attention and comment. What has suddenly flipped the narrative is the mass incursion of some 60,000 Moroccan citizens (predominantly young males) into the territories, mostly via the sea, as a result of which at least 57 are reported to have drowned. It is a tragic irony that within a fortnight of the border controls between Spain and Gibraltar coming down after 118 years, this should occur. But maybe it isn't coincidental.

There is a strong suggestion that irritation at the strong moral stance taken by Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, against Israel's genocide in Gaza and the US' war against Iran has drawn the ire of both Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. (Pathetically, but entirely believably, it is also possible that Spain's World Cup victory might have been a factor here.) Is it conceivable that the two may have cooked up the situation in Ceuta and Melilla with a compliant King Mohammed VI of Morocco in an attempt to embarrass Sánchez and undermine his standing at home and internationally? It almost goes without saying that Spanish rightwing parties, PP and Vox, are making political mischief and Georgia Meloni, the rightwing premier of Italy, is calling for Spain to be excluded from the Schengen Zone of European free movement across borders. 

Unsurprisingly, Sánchez has pointed out that irregular migration from North Africa into Italy has far outweighed that into Spain and that Spain has deported far more than Italy. According to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, irregular border crossings into the European Union have dropped significantly this year, with nearly 39,000 detections recorded in the first five months of 2026, a roughly 40% decline compared to the same period in 2025. Meanwhile, the right whips up hysteria about a migrant 'invasion' using the images coming out of Ceuta and Melilla. Most of the incursionists have now returned to Morocco and one hopes they may mobilise and direct their understandable rage against their own government, which has cynically exploited them as pawns in their shameless game.

Unfortunately, though, a picture is worth a thousand words - and the images are truly grim.

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