In societally advanced countries of the world - liberal democracies - the will of the people does prevail to a degree.  In North America and Europe as an example, where populations exercise their legally-mandated franchises, the democratic process is alive and well.  Other segments, like the economy may suffer, but people are free to express their opinions about however their society has progressed through freedom of expression.  And, when practical and possible and reasonable, their governments listen.

Throughout Africa and the Middle East, societally-impairing vestiges of ancient tribal mentalities persist, and there the rule of law is overlaid with corruption, vengeance, hatred and war, both internally through polarized determining agents of tribal-inspired suspicion and greed, and externally, with the very same human needs and emotions at the very basest, primeval level, motivating people and moving events along to their savage conclusions.

One African country after another has succumbed to rulers raping natural resources, funding their personal lifestyles, advancing those of their cronies, and oppressing the vast majority of those living under their fist in poverty, disease and social disorder.  The Middle East, always the nest of viperous, scheming tyrants, has undergone a transformation from the moderation of benevolent tyrants to the belligerent fanaticism of imperial theocracy.

Iran, which brought in the Islamist revolution, overturning years of steady progress toward human rights while still mired in the bonds of tyranny, paved the way for political, militant Islamism to raise its fist of domination with schemes to herald in a new international submission to Islam whether by steadily advancing infiltration on a tide of migrants abroad, or by virtue of establishing state and non-state militias known as mujahadeen, jihadists, those bidden to and overwhelmingly willing to view themselves as martyrs for a global cause.

Opposition to the ruling Ayatollahs in Iran came from among the secular-minded, and the Ayatollahs were swift to demonstrate that the incidental cruelties of the royal reign that preceded their own was by comparison to theirs, moderate.  The vicious malignancy with which the newly-established Islamic Republic of Iran responded to the challenges to its legitimacy through the auspices of the Almighty to rule by decree and by force, was sufficient unto the day, cementing their reign through their campaign of theistic-dominating terror.

Iran's arming, training and support of jihadist groups was second only to the oil-wealth-generated ability of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist kingdom to spread the rigidly authoritarian and jihadist-inspired training of future martyrs to a cause they shared, despite their abhorrence of each other's Islamist reflections of the divine; one Shi'ite, the other Sunni, deadly enemies by heritage and inheritance. Oil wealth established religious training schools around the world absorbing Islamic youth and spitting them out as future jihadis.

And then came the Arab Spring - a tentative springboard to change - touching down by turn in one Arab/Muslim country after the other, with ordinary citizens with moderate attachments to Islam, and yearning to see freedoms arrive in their societies reflective of what they observed through the advent of communication and education through social media.  People chafing at their social constraints, at their poverty, at their lack of opportunities to advance materially, socially, educationally. 

The responses by the ruling elite to these appeals for change to their political-societal standards were not viewed beneficently by their oppressors.  Yet the aggregate of the people who were persuaded by the tides of history and human advancement were inspired to continue their protests and their supporters grew and gradually embraced those initially not involved, until their protests became a swell of humanity demanding their human rights, with the collective power to destroy the governments that had so long oppressed them - or perish in the attempt.

These demonstrations dominated the international news as people looked on with fascination, wondering what the final outcome would bring to a long-suffocated society held in thrall to the whims and desires of dictators.  Violence begat more of the same, and thousands died in their zeal to oppose their oppressors as they gathered in tribal-based militias to fight against their regime's militias.  Some of those battles are still ongoing, with the secular-liberal-minority groups left behind, their war for liberation taken up by Islamist forces that had been suppressed by the ruling elite.

People exulted in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt in the belief that they had prevailed, when the despised old order was brought down and the new installed.  And they they awoke to the realization that the society they had envisioned would still elude them.  They had exchanged one tyranny for another, a reflection of what Iran had achieved a generation earlier.  In Syria one tyrant battling for his regime's enduring presence, is slaughtering his people.  In Egypt, a democratically elected Islamist government has turned its back on democracy.