It's not that cyber insurgency played a major part, it is that it was an intentional line of operations in this movement.

Tanks didn't play a major part in WWI, but the value was identified and the usage grew.

I do absolutely concur that when the conditions of insurgency are high enough, that even if all active resistance is effectively suppressed by the government, with the right catalyst things can move quickly and dramatically. This was certainly the case in Eastern Europe (though the emerging information age played a key role in unifying the populaces of several countries to dare to challenge Soviet dominion there as well); is certainly the case in Tunisia; and I contend is the case in many other Arab countries that US has supportive relationships with the governments of.

It would not be surprising at all, if the broader populace bases of these countries abandoned the "help" that AQ offers as too radical and too violent, and instead seeks other less violent and more effective means to achieve changes of governance that they have no legal venue to affect. The US needs to get in front of this, or run the risk of seeing much of our influence in such nations being set out on the curb along with the existing government when such changes occur. This this goes to the central theory in the two papers I published on Populace-Centric Engagement (here on SWJ) and Populace-Centric Foreign Policy (on World Politics Review) a couple years ago.