Turmoil in the Arab World

A preview of current events going on in the Middle East was the mostly peaceful take over in Lebanon in 2005. One thing about that "revolution" was that Hezbolla's influence wasn't eroded, so it won't ever be seen as major as what's happening here in early 2011.

In Tunis, an ancient land--home to Hannibal and Carthage, the mix was just right. Young people protested, they were mowed down by machine guns held by the army, but the next week the army disobeyed orders to shoot. Within an hour the presidential palace was taken, with President Ben Ali and his wife fleeing for their lives.

Emboldened by this, this exercise of "People's Power", other Arab nations are stirring, with the new epicenter being the Egyptian centers of government and culture, Cairo and Alexandria.

That mix that I wrote about earlier, the mix that has the potential to reshape the Arabic world more that GWB, is: 1) a very large percentage of the population being between 18 and 35 years old (ie, young); 2) high unemployment; 3) an ever widening gap between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else; and 4) massive government corruption.

That mix is present in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian territory, all of whom are watching with great unease how the events are unfolding in Egypt, the country with the world's largest Arabic population. King Abdulla in Jordan has already dissolved his government and pledged to hold elections very soon.

Hosni Mubarak, the 80+ year old "President" of Egypt has announced he won't run for reelection come September, but his motives are clear. He's hoping that his announcement will soothe the angry masses, that they then will settle down and things will return to business as normal, and come September, nobody will remember some crap that happened in January and February. He's pretty much completely out of touch with his country.

Mubarak, like any dictatorial leader, has spent the last thirty years eroding all of the country's civil institutions. This ensures that a healthy opposition doesn't form. The only institution that any dictator has to let pretty much control themselves, just so it can stay dynamic, is the military. That is the case in Egypt. The one obvious and glaring issue with that is that any dictatorial leader will be vulnerable only to the military.

The next few weeks will show us how Mubarak's regime might fare in the long run, since the young protesters aren't buying the "won't run again" line.

Another worry for these countries, once the governments have been disposed of, is then how does one actually run a country? A country that had this problem figured out by the time they needed it was Eritrea. (I'd been pronouncing it "e-RIT-tre-uh" ever since I met some guys from there, but I heard that it's actually "air-uh-TREE-uh".)

After the end of WWII, and the ouster of Italy from Eritrea by the British, Ethiopia and its king Hailie Salassie convinced the UN that Ethiopia and Eritrea should be in a Federation, an arrangement Eritrea agreed to, but soon came to regret. For thirty years they fought Ethiopian domination, with no help from anyone from the international community. They were called the greatest guerilla army in the world, and eventually took back the capital Asmara, a city that Mussolini had built up in the modern/fascist architectural fashion as Piccola Roma, Little Rome. By then the Eritrean fighters had spent nearly three decades running underground schools, hospitals, courts, even convalescent homes.

Eritrea had the necessary infrastructure in place when they finally became the power.

Let's hope that what replaces Ben Ali in Tunis and possibly Mubarak in Egypt isn't as bad.