Arab Spring (2010-)

New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick says the Obama White House watched Arab democracy fall, and now the Trump administration is embracing Egypt's autocratic president.

As we approach the third anniversary of the demonstrations in Egypt, Fresh Air critic John Powers reviews a documentary that captures the story of Cairo's Tahrir Square. He says the film "is less a final reckoning than an exciting bulletin from the front lines of an unfinished revolution."

As the Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times, David Kirkpatrick has covered events in the region since January 2011. He says that the toppling of the democratically elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi throws the changes of the Arab Spring into question.

Reporter David Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times, reflects on his time reporting on the Arab Spring and discusses what the election of President Mohammed Morsi means for Egypt, the United States and Israel.

New York Times war correspondent Anthony Shadid, a frequent guest on Fresh Air, died Thursday after apparently suffering a fatal asthma attack in Syria, where he was reporting on the political uprising. Fresh Air remembers Shadid with excerpts from his December 2011 appearance on the show.

The protests that led to the Egyptian revolution last year were organized in part by Wael Ghonim, who used an anonymous Facebook page to coordinate the demonstrations. In his new book, Ghonim explains how social media helped transform his country.

For the past year, veteran war correspondent Anthony Shadid has been reporting on the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Tunisia. Last March, he was kidnapped and beaten by security forces in Libya. "It remains one of the scariest moments of my life," he says.

The West Bank has yet to see a democracy movement on the level of those sparking dramatic changes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. It could have a huge effect on the region, were it to happen, says conflict resolution expert Robert Malley.

The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza details President Obama's response to the ongoing uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. He explains why the president's actions — in Egypt and then in Libya — say a great deal about the administration's larger foreign policy ideology.

New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins recently returned from Yemen, where he met with demonstrators who have called for President Ali Abdullah Saleh's immediate resignation. Filkins explains why Yemen's uprisings are particularly worrisome for U.S. counterterrorism officials.

The future of Libya has become a key part in the rapidly changing transformation of the Arab world. On today's Fresh Air, political scientist Marc Lynch explains why the United States and its allies decided to intervene -- and what's at stake for each side.

Former CIA operatives Robert and Dayna Baer met on the job and fell in love. They talk about their relationship and some of their assignments in The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story.

Journalist Charles Sennott recently returned from Tahrir Square, where he was filming a documentary on the revolution for PBS's Frontline. It focuses on the young members of the Muslim Brotherhood who played an important role in Egypt's revolution.

The co-founder of Twitter talks about how the service was used in Egypt to help organize the protests, and about the rumors that the popular microblogging service could be purchased by Google or Facebook.