http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/02/15/muslim.world.unrest/index.html?hpt=T1
After Egypt, people power hits like a tsunami
By Moni Basu, CNN
February 15, 2011 3:48 p.m. EST
Click to play
Egypt's domino effect
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Protests erupted in Iran, Yemen and Bahrain this week
* The ousters of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt have inspired
people, say analysts
* It's hard to predict if other governments will fall
* But the region will never be the same, analysts agree
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(CNN) -- It began with the self-immolation of an unemployed college
graduate in Tunisia. Now, newfound people power in the Middle East and
North Africa is spreading fast.
Bolstered by the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, popular uprising
has now taken root in a part of the world where it has not been a part
of the trajectory of change. On Tuesday, the birthday of the Prophet
Mohammed, parts of the Muslim world were on fire, the people clamoring
for change.
Fierce demonstrations erupted in Bahrain, where people have organized
themselves through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter,
the same forums used by their Egyptian and Tunisian counterparts.
Human rights activists said Bahrainis initially demanded reform, but
some are now calling for the removal of the royal family.
In Yemen, pro- and anti-government protesters clashed for a fifth day
in the capital city of Sanaa.
"This is against the Yemeni constitution, and people have the right to
peacefully protest," said human rights activist Abdel Rahman Barman.
Why Iran is different from Egypt
Bahrain's king condemns protester deaths
Iranian lawmakers condemn protests
Could Iran be the next Egypt?
RELATED TOPICS
* Egypt
* Iran
* Bahrain
* Yemen
* Tunisia
And, as Cairo's Tahrir Square slowly emptied, Tehran's Azadi Square
swelled with people. Both names mean freedom and despite a security
crackdown, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in the Iranian
capital Monday.
Algeria, Jordan and Syria have also been a part of the domino effect.
"We really are facing a tsunami in Arab politics," said Bruce Riedel,
senior fellow for foreign policy at Brookings' Saban Center for Middle
East Policy.
"I don't think there is any country -- except the very small and very
rich and oil-rich countries like Qatar and Abu Dhabi -- that is
immune," Riedel said. "All of these countries have the potential for
unrest in a way they've never had it before."
If only Mohammed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old unemployed man who was
beaten by police and then set himself on fire, had lived to see what
he began. But Bouazizi died in January, a catalyst for the events that
unfolded rapidly after his death.
Tunisian dictator Zine El Abedine Ben Ali fell on January 14 and fled
the country. Just days later, Egyptians began massing at Tahrir
Square. After 18 short days, Mubarak was gone, as abruptly as he had
risen to power three decades ago.
"The yearning for change has been there for at least a decade, if not
more, but it took the events in Tunisia and now Egypt to break the
barrier of fear that people had," Riedel said. "Fear that the army
would shoot them, fear that the army would crack down on them. What it
did was it broke that barrier of fear."
The region -- where people are divided between fabulously wealthy
"haves" and desperately poor "have-nots," a region split between those
who can and those who cannot participate in government -- sits like a
tinderbox, ready to explode.
"There's a common thread there," said David Pollock, senior fellow at
the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"Yes, they do want freedom in the sense of not national independence
-- they have that -- but freedom from oppressive internal security,
authoritarian political controls and the freedom to participate in a
more democratic government," he said.
There are also economic concerns.
"People are very upset, and in many cases I think with good reason,
about poverty and unemployment," Pollock said.
Aaron Miller, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, said the divide between the "cans" and the
"cannots" is, in some ways, more dangerous than the gap between rich
and poor.
These are no peasant revolts, Miller said. The people on the streets
include huge numbers of under- and unemployed people, "sometimes
affluent individuals who feel humiliated and powerless."
"That's one of the driving psychological factors that powered Egypt's
uprising," Miller said.
There is also a vast generational gap that some governments may not be
able to bridge, said Ken Gude, managing director for national security
at the Center for American Progress.
"Most of these entrenched regimes throughout the region are governed
by an old elite establishment that has grown more and more out of
touch with the younger generations of its population," Gude said.
"Consequently, we're seeing -- perhaps sparked by what transpired in
Egypt and Tunisia -- a stronger push among those younger generations
for greater influence and a larger political voice in their country."
The potential for uprisings exists in those places where all the gaps
are widest, though it's impossible to predict whether other dictators
or entrenched regimes will fall as they did in Tunisia and Egypt.
Beyond the overarching commonalities, each nation faces specific challenges.
Yemen must deal with regional and tribal rivalries. Bahrain faces
simmering tension between Sunnis, who form the ruling class, and
Shiites, who form a slight majority.
Pollock said Saudi Arabia, too, could possibly see unrest, but
probably on a small scale. And in Syria, "people are just too scared,
too intimidated" by Bashar al-Assad's iron hand.
Algeria, he said, also bears watching because it shares many of
Egypt's underlying issues of high numbers of young people,
unemployment, corruption and a leadership that has been in power for a
while.
Other countries, like Morocco, have been "surprisingly quiet," Pollock said.
In Morocco, the king has only been around for a decade, and Pollock
said perhaps people are still willing to give him a chance. There have
also been some "safety valves," such as a parliament.
The United Arab Emirates, Pollock said, is a wealthy nation that can
afford to take care of its citizens, if necessary, in pretty lavish
style. And about 75% of the people are guest workers from other
nations "who don't have any rights at all," Pollock said.
And then there is Iran. It's no stranger to mass demonstrations -- the
Islamic regime itself came to power through revolution.
But the regime has already shown the world that it will not hesitate
to suppress street demonstrations and the opposition there has not yet
been able to coalesce around common goals, said Karim Sajadpour, a
fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The other problem in Iran, Sajadpour said, is that the international
media have been banned from covering the demonstrations. The world
cannot see what is happening in Azadi Square as they did in Tahrir
Square.
But Pollock predicted protests will continue in Iran.
"We saw yesterday that despite the most severe kind of internal
repression, you had thousands of demonstrators out on the streets, and
that's the tip of the iceberg," Pollock said. "I think this probably
foreshadows a long period of cat-and-mouse games continuing between
the opposition and the regime at kind of a simmer."
Pollock did not see another government's ouster on the horizon.
"But it's important to note that after Tunisia it took a while, it
took a few weeks for the protests to really start gathering steam in
Egypt," he said. "Right now, we're just a few days after Mubarak was
finally tossed out in Egypt. It's too soon to be very confident about
where this might go next."
It's hard to say what will happen next, but almost every observer
agrees that this part of the world will never be the same.
Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson center, quoted Dorothy in the "Wizard of
Oz" to put events in perspective. "We're not in Kansas anymore," he
said. The United States and its allies, he added, need to understand
that.
"This is a transformative event in Middle East politics," Miller said.
Enough, perhaps, to change dark perceptions of a region mired in
extremism and bloodshed.
Two powerful messages are echoing through the region, he said.
To al Qaeda, the protesters have said: Change does not have to occur
through an adherence to radical ideology or violence.
And to autocrats and dictators: "You better start looking in the
mirror and making changes or you're going to be looking in the rear
view mirror," Miller said. Those "footsteps" you hear are "coming for
you."
CNN's Ashley Hayes, Sarah Aarthun and Alan Silverleib contributed to
this report.
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