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

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • revolution makers
ence. A government is like a building held up by pillars, Sharp explained.
Otpor needed to pull Milosevic’s pillars into the opposition camp.
In fact, Otpor was already doing well with two important Milosevic pillars.
One was old people: They had always been Milosevic’s base of support,
but the constant arrests of Otpor’s 16-year-olds—and the government’s
hysterical accusations that the students were terrorists—were getting
grandma angry. The other pillar was the police. From the beginning, Otpor
had treated the police as allies-in-waiting. Otpor members delivered
cookies and flowers to police stations (sometimes with a TV camera in
tow). Instead of howling at police during confrontations, Otpor members
would cheer them.
The Serbs recounted this to the Burmese, and added another step: the
power graph, a Djinovic invention. He asked the students to list various
groups with influence in society, and then chart each group’s level of loyalty
to the regime over time. The idea was to see which groups had fluctuated—
and what events in Burma’s recent history provoked the change. From that
they could glean clues about whom it was most profitable to woo.
The students put themselves in the shoes of Burma’s police, workers,
women, and other groups—what did they all want The lists they compiled
were predictable in their self-interest: Students wanted private schools,
businesspeople wanted a reliable banking system, farmers wanted crop
subsidies. What was interesting was what the lists didn’t include. “Where
is democracy Human rights” Popovic said, pointing to the lists tacked to
the wall. “People don’t give a shit about these things. Normally your politicians
talk about things that don’t matter to people. Remember Gandhi’s Salt
March The issue was not ‘You Brits get out!’—not officially. The issue was:
‘We want to make salt.’”
Approaching midweek, the Serbs were worried. “They don’t
trust each other,” Djinovic told me over lunch. The Burmese held a meeting
on Tuesday night in K2’s hotel room to air it all. They introduced themselves
to each other, and set rules for the group. They figured out a common cover
story to tell Burmese authorities. They ended up playing songs like “Dust in
the Wind” on the guitar and singing until 3 a.m.
Things started to change the next day. Wednesday’s lesson was about re-
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