The Arab Spring was a series of antigovernment protests that took hold throughout the Middle East and North Africa beginning in December 2010 and that greatly affected the security of citizens, as well as government regimes, in the affected nations. The protests began in Tunisia, then moved across North Africa and to the larger Middle East. They affected a number of countries spanning from Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia in North Africa to Yemen and Bahrain in the Gulf, to Syria and beyond in the Middle East. The outcomes of the demonstrations varied significantly based most clearly on how the national government and the military responded. In some cases, the government fell in response to the protests without the eruption of civil war; in others, the ...