Three years ago, a fruit seller in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest against the corruption prevalent among the Tunisian police and the government. His act of defiance sparked off a series of protests that shook monarchs and authoritative governments across the Middle East, a region home to over 380 million people. When the protests first erupted, they inspired a sense of hope in the Middle East. People believed that their collective action could inspire change in a region dominated by calcified and oppressive power structures. The sense of ...