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Article 1. The Guardian Where the Arab spring will end is anyone's guess Ian Black June 17, 2011 -- Tunisia's Jasmine revolution will always be remembered as the event that triggered the Arab spring, which has shattered the status quo from Libya to Syria and is widely seen as the biggest transformative event of the 21st century so far. But, six months on, progress has been patchy. Mohammed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian who started it all by burning himself to death in December 2010, had his desperate imitators in Egypt, where revolution erupted days after Zine el- Abidine Ben Ali's flight into Saudi exile; and in Jordan, which has seen sporadic unrest but no uprising. But if the politics of the Arab spring are local, many factors are common across: young people angry and frustrated at the lack of freedoms, opportunities and jobs, unaccountable and corrupt governments, cronyism and, in a few places, grinding poverty. Rich and poor alike lived in fear of the secret police. But Tunisia, one of the most repressive regimes, fell quickly. The decision by the army to dump the president and not crush the protests was a vital lesson for the Egyptian generals. The alternative is the cruelty of the dictators' fightbacks in Tripoli and Damascus. Regional differences were ignored in the chain reaction that followed. Yemen's protests were galvanised by the drama in Cairo's Tahrir Square but they also involved tribalism, elite rivalry and a small but alarming al-Qaida presence against a background of resource depletion and fear of state HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018086