Change is in the air!
Fragrance from the Jasmine Revolution, which overthrew Tunisia's hated President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, is spreading over the larger West Asia-North Africa region, especially to Egypt, Yemen and Jordan.
By the time these lines appear, it's possible that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's oppressive 30-year-long reign would have ended and other changes would have occurred in the region.
Big events in Egypt, the Arab world's largest country, tend to shake the entire region. Tunisia (pop. 11 million) is tiny beside Egypt (pop. 84 million). But its 29-day uprising was the Arab world's first real revolution. Unlike past military takeovers and palace coups, this was a mass uprising.
It evoked the most resonance in Egypt, but it has shaken other Arab autocrats too, who must be watching the unfolding events in mortal fear that their own people would revolt.
Arab citizens are watching Egypt's protests with hope. It is ordinary people like them, not Islamists or foreign troops, who are challenging a dictator. Most people in the Arab League's 22 countries are disgusted with corrupt dictatorial regimes, which provide no public services or food security.
Arab governments haven't done well by their people. Even the oil-rich states haven't educated them. Under external pressure and the recent global slowdown, many governments have further cut food and fuel subsidies, increasing people's suffering.
People's experience of poverty, unemployment and lack of freedom is identical all over the Arab world. So, Egypt-style protests are likely to spread, seeking replacement of autocratic regimes by democracy.
The Arab world's democratic deficit is huge. Where elections take place, they are rigged -- as in Egypt, where the ruling party's parliamentary majority rose from 75% to 95%.
Only three Arab countries can be called some kind of democracy: Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Iraq. But they're flawed. Lebanon's democracy is denominational, with the top offices being divided up between religious communities and powerful families.
Hamas won free and fair elections in the Palestinian Territories in 2006. But it was excluded from the Palestinian Authority. In Iraq, the democratic process runs within a US-dictated constitution and policy framework.
Where elected legislatures exist in some form, they wield no power independent of the ruling families. The richest Arab states -- Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman and Qatar -- are at the bottom of the democracy index.
The democracy deficit is often blamed on Islam, especially salafi "desert Islam," reinforced by obscurantism. But other factors are more important: large-scale social destruction and creation of artificial states by European imperialists; tribalism and paternalism; oil money, which obviates the need to negotiate popular participation; the state's failure to tax the rich and break their stranglehold, and not least, foreign-aid dependence.
The Western powers, led by the US, sustained Arab autocracies during the Cold War. They do so now to maintain the US's strategic alliance system. Israel, followed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, is pivotal to it. Washington has annually bankrolled Egypt with $3.5 billion since Anwar El-Sadat made peace with Israel in 1979, breaking its isolation in the Arab world.
Faced with a popular upsurge, President Mubarak dissolved his cabinet and appointed former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as vice-president. But the protesters chanted: "Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are American agents."
Mr. Suleiman is indeed a trusted US ally, long-standing CIA collaborator, and the main conduit between Mr. Mubarak and Washington. He implemented the US policy of "rendition" of terror suspects for interrogation under torture. Torture has long been practised in Egypt.
The Egyptian people's anger is rooted in opposition to the Mubarak dynasty, police brutality, widespread poverty, high food prices, and unemployment. People under 30 make up almost two-thirds of Egypt's population. About 90% of Egypt's jobless are under 30.
Discontent has infected the army. Soldiers refuse to open fire on protestors and people paint anti-Mubarak slogans on battle-tanks.
Mr. Mubarak's government unleashed thugs upon peaceful protestors in Tahrir Square on February 1. But they had to retreat and the prime minister had to apologise.
Hatred of Mr. Mubarak has united different social layers, including trade unions, the 6 April Youth Movement created in solidarity with industrial workers, and middle class strata.
Numerous parties, including the National Association for Change led by former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood, and secular parties too, support the protests. But none leads them, certainly not the Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, Egypt's millionaires are fleeing. And people are publicly telling Mr Mubarak: "The plane is ready."
A collapse of the Mubarak regime will almost certainly ignite protests in other Arab states and prove a transformative moment in West Asia-North Africa, radically reshaping it and opening a new democratic epoch.
What does this mean for the Western powers? The West was at first reluctant to distance itself from Mr. Mubarak, its loyal ally and Israel's closest friend in the region Ditching him might provoke a groundswell of protest all over the volatile oil-rich region, creating further instability.
But the protests grew. The West is now asking Mr. Mubarak to step down: backing him would earn it intense popular hostility, just as happened in Iran in 1979 with the detested Shah.
Even Washington has stopped vacillating between expressing faith in the stability of the Egyptian government, and calling for "an orderly transition" to a broad-based government. President Barack Obama has told Mr. Mubarak to act immediately to make this happen.
Israel is worried that it'll lose an indispensable ally, which is crucial in maintaining confusion and divisions in the Arab world, and the status quo in Gaza. Growing protests could soon highlight the Palestine issue.
If Egypt's next government decides to open the Rafah crossing with Gaza, it will break Israel's siege of the Strip and foil its hitherto remarkable success in thwarting the Palestinian Authority's claims to sovereignty and forcing it to accept illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
The situation is pregnant with possibilities.
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