Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world
ings of impending crisis fell on deaf ears precisely because the predictions
never seemed to come to pass. Authoritarian Arab regimes seemed all too
capable of holding on to their power and protesters unable to break through
to spark mass revolt.
If the problems were clear, it’s true that few saw these particular waves
of protest coming. At first, the unrest in Tunisia that began on Dec. 17 appeared
more of the same. When the demonstrations began to pose a real
challenge to Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, few thought that they could spread to
other Arab countries. When upheaval began to break out across the region,
from Egypt to Yemen and Jordan, most thought that Arab regimes would
be well-prepared to avoid suffering the Tunisian president’s fate. A decade
of watching protests across the region fail to dislodge autocratic regimes left
observers wary and skeptical. The power and success of the protests sparked
by Tunisia took everyone by surprise—not least the protesters themselves.
It is far too soon to offer confident conclusions about why these protests
succeeded where so many others had failed. But some things seem clear
even now. Youth movements drew on the experience of a decade of protest
and managed to bring mass publics into the streets in the face of very real
repression and fears. The demonstration effect from Tunisia was far more
powerful than most political scientists expected. Al Jazeera almost certainly
played a decisive role in bringing the Tunisian and then Egyptian stories
to the broader Arab public, casting them as a dramatic new chapter in the
ongoing struggle for change that had always been central to the network’s
agenda. Social media, from Facebook and YouTube to SMS networks, gave
powerful weapons to those organizing protests and helped them shape international
views of their struggle. The United States played an important
role in Egypt, particularly, by restraining the military from massive repression
and urging the regime to begin a real, immediate transition.
The essays in this volume represent only the beginning of the story; they
mark our first, unfolding efforts to understand a process very much in its
opening phase. For now, of course, we are left with more questions than
answers: Will Arab regimes, frightened by Egypt and Tunisia, respond
with the old game of repression and co-optation, or will they begin real reforms
Will the new Egypt and Tunisia move toward democracy, or will they
succumb to a rebranded authoritarianism Could protest morph into chaos,
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