Turmoil

Tunisia, Egypt, and most recently Jordan.  The "street" is forcing change in the Middle East.

In an uprising led mostly by young working-class men, Tunisians ousted authoritarian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali on January 14.   Opponents of ben Ali's government had complained of corruption, lack of jobs and repression. Continuing protests on the composition of the interim government, which included members from the former regime led to a major Cabinet reshuffle on January 27.  The interim government has scheduled general elections within six months. Both the US and the EU, which had long backed Ben Ali's regime as a counter to Islamic extremism, have now endorsed the uprising with pledges of financial aid.


In Egypt, initial protests came in early December after preliminary election results were announced. The opposition charged that the elections were rigged.  Then on January 2, protesters gathered in central Cairo to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.  As events unfolded in Tunisia, the opposition to Mubarak's rule gathered strength and crystallized around the Nobel prize winning opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei.  (ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and prominently and correctly disputed the US WMD rationale for the invasion of Iraq.  Too bad the Bush and Blair Administrations didn't listen to him then - countless lives and a trillion dollars would have been saved.  But that's another subject.)  Protests against unemployment, corruption and rising prices have continued unabated since January 25th.  On January 29th, Mubarak fired his Cabinet.  Soldiers and policemen are now allowing the protests to continue.  Today more than a million Egyptians across the country protested. Mubarak says he will be addressing the nation and will not be running in the scheduled Septemebr elections.  Unless he can satisfy the demands of the Egyptian people soon, I think his step-down from power is imminent.  Mubarak and Egypt's secular government have been key to US strategy for 30 years.


Thousands of people in Jordan had taken to the streets in protests, demanding the country's prime minister step down, and the government curb rising prices, inflation and unemployment.  King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his Cabinet after today's Egyptian protests, and organizers in Yemen and Syria, with their own authoritarian rulers, have called for protests.

Across the Middle East, there will be change.  The US for many years has backed authoritarian secular regimes as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism.  (Remember when Saddam Hussein was our ally?) It's reminiscent, on perhaps a lesser scale, of the US approach towards communism in the cold war days.  We disgracefully backed some of the most repressive military dictatorships and oligarchies around the world as long as they said they were anti-communist.  When rebellion and change and democracy occur, it may not always result in what the US wants.  But we cannot and should not dictate to the world's peoples what their nations should look like.