Middle East — 2011 Egyptian revolution and Lebanon (History (2028+) HL)

When Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970, his vice-president Anwar Sadat took over Egypt. Most people expected him to be a caretaker, not a revolutionary in his own right — they were wrong.

Sadat reversed Nasser's direction almost completely. He launched infitah infitah, opening Egypt to Western investment instead of Soviet-style state control. In foreign policy he expelled Soviet advisers in 1972, then fought Israel in the 1973 October War to restore Egyptian pride and force negotiations.

That war led, eventually, to peace. In 1978 Sadat signed the Camp David Accords with Israel's Menachem Begin, and in 1979 Egypt became the first Arab state to formally recognise Israel. It won Sadat a Nobel Peace Prize — and made him a traitor in the eyes of many Arabs and Islamists.

Why the peace treaty was so explosive: Most of the Arab League saw Egypt's treaty as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Egypt was suspended from the League and isolated from its Arab neighbours for a decade. At home, Islamist groups saw Sadat as abandoning Islamic and Arab solidarity for a deal with Israel.

Domestically, Sadat's economic opening created new wealth for a small elite while ordinary Egyptians faced rising prices. When he cut food subsidies in 1977, Egypt erupted into the Bread Riots — dozens killed, and Sadat had to reverse the cuts within a day.

Cause and consequence: one leader, two audiences: Sadat's assassination shows how the same policy can be read completely differently. To the West, Camp David made him a peacemaker. To his killers, it made him an apostate. Any strong Paper 3 answer should explain both readings, not just one.

Sadat's vice-president, Hosni Mubarak, took power immediately after the assassination in 1981. He would rule Egypt for the next 30 years — longer than any Egyptian leader since Muhammad Ali in the 19th century.

Mubarak governed under a permanent state of emergency state of emergency, declared right after Sadat's death and never lifted. It let the regime ban protests, detain critics without trial, and try civilians in military courts.

Underneath the politics, Egypt faced brutal economic and demographic pressure. The population nearly doubled between 1981 and 2011, and roughly 60% of Egyptians were under 30 by 2011 — a huge youth bulge youth bulge entering a job market that could not absorb them.

External factors mattered too. The 2008 global financial crisis hit tourism and trade. And in December 2010, a Tunisian street vendor's self-immolation triggered the Tunisian Revolution, which toppled President Ben Ali within a month — proving to Egyptians that a long-ruling autocrat could actually fall.

The 18 days: Protests began on 25 January 2011 in Cairo's Tahrir Square, organised partly through Facebook and inspired by Tunisia. Despite violent crackdowns, crowds kept growing. On 11 February 2011, after the army signalled it would not fire on protesters, Mubarak resigned and handed power to the military.

Lebanon's civil war (1975–1990) shows how a small country's internal balance could be shattered by outside forces — and how, once broken, it dragged in almost the whole region.

Lebanon's 1943 constitution split power between religious groups: a Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister, a Shia speaker of parliament. By the 1970s this confessional system confessional system no longer matched the population, since Muslim communities had grown much faster than Christian ones — resentment simmered.

The spark came from outside. After being expelled from Jordan in 1970–71, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) relocated its bases to southern Lebanon and Beirut. It launched attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil and built up an armed presence that acted almost like a state within a state.

Why the PLO's presence was so destabilising: Lebanese Christian militias saw the PLO as an armed foreign force upsetting the delicate balance and dragging Lebanon into war with Israel. Many Muslim Lebanese, by contrast, sympathised with the Palestinian cause. The PLO's presence turned a fragile domestic balance into a battle line.

Civil war broke out in April 1975. What began as a Lebanese conflict between Christian and Muslim/leftist militias deepened fast as regional powers stepped in, each backing different factions.

Foreign and UN involvement followed the escalation. The UN created UNIFIL UNIFIL in 1978 to monitor southern Lebanon, though it struggled to keep the peace. After Israel's 1982 invasion, a US-French-Italian Multinational Force deployed to oversee the PLO's withdrawal and stabilise Beirut.

The Multinational Force's failure: The intervention turned deadly. In October 1983, suicide bombings killed 241 US and 58 French servicemen at their Beirut barracks — attacks linked to the militants who would become Hezbollah. The US and its allies withdrew by early 1984, a clear sign that outside powers could not simply impose stability.

Out of this chaos came Hezbollah Hezbollah ('Party of God'), formed around 1982 by Lebanese Shia clerics and fighters with Iranian funding, training and ideology. Its founding purpose was resistance to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, but it grew into a lasting political and military force representing Lebanon's Shia community.

The war finally wound down with the 1989 Taif Agreement, brokered by Saudi Arabia with Arab League backing, which rebalanced political power more evenly between Christians and Muslims and paved the way for most militias to disarm — except Hezbollah, which kept its weapons, justified by continued Israeli occupation in the south until 2000.