The Arab World is Burning...maybe...possibly...actually, we are not really sure

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Last week, Tunisia rose up and ousted its long time ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali -- and is now hearing support for the Jasmine Revolution from a top general.

This morning, the streets of Cairo erupted in protests against long time President Mubarak and his government. Reports on the radio this morning said that police were clashing with protesters who would disperse and regroup over and over again in demonstrations that beyond anything the Egyptian government has ever seen.

Also today, 1000s of Sunni Arabs and Christians poured in the streets of Lebanon to protest Hezbollah's announcement that it had appointed Najib Mikati as Prime Minister.

Today, 3 different Arab nations have either ousted a sitting government or are seeing large scale protests against their governments. Does anyone want to offer personal insight or predictions about what this might mean for the region?

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Much could be said on the matter, but let's begin with a curious perspective:

http://tarpley.net/2011/01/16/tunisian-wikileaks-putsch/

Sounds like a conspiracy theory, doesn't it?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

It does -- and the guy proposing it seems exceptionally fond of conspiracy theories in general.

Can't really assess the credibility of that coming from someone who has latched onto a large number of conspiracies, many of them certifiably wacko.

I think a lot of the governments in the Arab world are getting very surprised by the speed of modern communication and are finding it very hard to get ahead of issues.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

The culture shock must be immense.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming many of them are beginning to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis (credit to Tom Lehrer for that).

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless, I read it and it was fascinating. Better than the best sci-fi I've read in a year!

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

me too

[thies.livejournal.com]

their tourism industry just went to shit

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

People disliking the Egyptian dictatorship is nothing new, the dictators were the targets of the first-generation Islamists of the 1970s. So that's more "Ho-Hum *flips the page.*". The same but moreso in Lebanon, which ever since the civil war in the 1970s has been a whole level of problematic which is only overshadowed by Israel-Palestine. There hasn't been a government that would have some claim to legitimacy there since the 1920s. And even then that claim was debatable at best.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Too soon to tell if anything will come of this. But I do think that in any case the old guard is going to realize that the rules have changed.

[capthek.livejournal.com]

I am just back from Egypt and I made a similar post on my own lj so sorry if some of this may have already been read.

The people I met, mostly in Cairo but all up and down the Nile to the border with Sudan had a very similar feeling about long term decline. Perhaps it goes with living in a nation with huge thousand year old ruins of great empires? There was a feeling that Mubarak had gotten old enough that there would finally be an election soon and at least a form of democracy and then he started to groom his son to simply take over and thus what had been kind of proudly considered a modern state would become a form of a monarchy. The people I met there are not strongly religious and instead wish to emulate secular Turkey rather than places like Iran ect...

Anyway, similar to Tunisia, poverty is widespread while at the same time they get a ton of wealthy westerners and see a ton of wester tv that demonstrates a level of wealth and freedom most of them can only dream of. Egypt at least as a good amount of freedom when it comes to speaking and writing so lots of anger about Mubarak and the state gets out so it really only needed a spark, like the spark of Tunisia to get things going.

I can't tell you how far this will go though as Egypt has a far more elaborate police and security system and Tunisia so I doubt that even huge protests would cause their president to flee or to really make any grand changes. Time will tell, perhaps things will continue to boil over? Things could just as easily simmer down though to be placated by a small thing like Mubarak saying there will be an election and then simply fixing it for his son.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Regarding Lebanon, it's really not new, Hezbollah has been pulling the same crap for decades. It's just that now, there's no standing Syrian army in place to keep the Sunnis and Christians from doing anything about it. Of course, when they do something about it, Hezbollah merely ratchets up the craziness. In effect, one party, though it by no means represents a majority of either the people or in the government, is able to hold the rest of the country hostage.

Lebanon will never be a stable country until the armed paramilitaries/terrorist organizations (your definition depends on which one you happen to hate more, really...people tend to forget that the Christians have militias too, though by this stage they're much reduced in influence) no longer dominate the political process, and that can't happen until Iran and Syria get out of the game. All the Cedar Revolutions in the world will only have a temporary effect so long as Hezbollah still receives arms and hoodwinks the world into thinking it's some high-minded defender of the Lebanese people.

Also, the situation in Lebanon will always be unique in the Arab world because of the unique demographics; it operates with a different dynamic than countries such as Tunisia or Egypt where the populations are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim (and yeah Christians make up maybe 10% of the Egyptian population, and have been in the news a lot recently, but they have very little political power, unlike in Lebanon, where 40-50% of the people are Christian).

[whoasksfinds.livejournal.com]

i think its part of a broader, regional, slow motion revolution. authoritarian regimes wont last in the long term, unless they are willing to go to extreme measure to hold onto power.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Dear arabs, welcome to the internets