The leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, addresses a crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 8, 2024. Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP via Getty Images
The leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, addresses a crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on December 8, 2024. Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP via Getty ImagesSocks mocking former president Bashar al-Asad and the regime forces for sale in Salhiyya, Damascus on January 29, 2025. Rahaf Aldoughli.Fighters in SNA groups during operation Deterrence of Aggression against Bashar al-Asad. Northern Syria, December 3, 2024. Fieldwork photo by the author’s research fixer. Shared courtesy of the author.
A Sudanese woman chants slogans during a demonstration demanding a civilian body to lead the transition to democracy, outside the army headquarters in Khartoum on April 12, 2019. Ahsraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images.
Sudanese workers, who lost their jobs due to the deteriorating economic situation in Lebanon, protest outside their country’s embassy in Beirut to demand repatriation, on July 2, 2020. Joseph Eid/AFP via Getty Images
Yemeni university professors and students carry newspapers with the portrait of professor Mohammad bin Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil during a protest condemning his assassination, Sanaa, November 3, 2014. Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty ImagesA Sanaa University professor gives a lecture in October 2011 inside a tent camp set up for students whose classes have been disrupted by the uprising. Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images
People demanding civilian rule after the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir at a sit-in at the military headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan, April 24, 2019. Bryan Denton/The New York Times/ReduxSudanese protesters create barricades in Khartoum amid ongoing demonstrations against the October 2021 military coup, November 17, 2021. AFP via Getty Images
Volunteers from an NGO clean the streets of Tunis while garbage collectors are on strike, January 16, 2014. Yassine Gaidi/Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesThe musician Lotfi Gharbi plays piano in a street in Bizerte to protest the accumulation of garbage, 2016. (The image circulated widely on social media without attribution and a video of the performance can be seen on YouTube.)Sarcastic graffiti of a skater who is casting his ballot in a Tunis office where it is written “secret ballot,” but the ballot is instead going into a trash can, 2019, Tunis. Thierry Monasse/Getty ImagesTunisians go on strike in Tunis on November 10, 2021, after the death of a demonstrator from tear gas inhalation during protests against the reopening of a garbage dump in Agareb. Hasan Mrad/Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Anti-corporate demonstrators in Oakland, CA, take part in a march in support of protestors in Egypt, November 2011. Protesters in Oakland proposed the march after their Egyptian counterparts marched on the US Embassy in solidarity with the Occupy Oakland movement, according to a statement released on the Occupy Oakland website. Kim White/ReutersPortrait murals depicting revolutionary martyrs (left to right) Gaber Salah “Gika,” Alaa Abdelhady, Mina Daniel. Downtown Cairo, Egypt. December 2014. Mashid Mohadjerin/ReduxA poster of Egypt’s ousted president Mohammad Mursi in the pro-Mursi protest camp in Rabaa Square, Cairo, that was violently demolished by the military. August 15, 2013. Nameer Galal/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images