on revolution road | yuri kozyrev
Call it the Jasmine Revolution, the Arab Spring or the Facebook Revolution, there’s a powerful Sirocco blowing across North Africa and the Middle East. Much of the reportage on this world-changing wind has focused on the common threads that run across the region: the youthfulness of the revolutionaries, their clever use of social media websites, their embrace (for the most part) of nonviolent protests as a political tool. But as I crisscrossed the region this spring, capturing images from Libya to Egypt to Bahrain, I was just as conscious of the differences I encountered: the rebels in Benghazi and the protesters in Bahrain may both be fighting tyranny, but their approach and aspirations are not the same. I came to the conclusion that each revolution must be assessed in its own context, because each had a distinctive impact. The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each therefore demands its own narrative.
