Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

In the wake of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, the nearly peaceful overthrow of Egypt’s President Mubarak, and now Libya’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests, hundreds of thousands of protesters have turned out in the streets of major cities across the Middle East from Iran and Iraq to Yemen and Bahrain. Opposition leaders and religious figures are calling everywhere for people to demand more accountability from their governments, and the democratic consequences will be far reaching for years to come.

Thousands of protesters choked Pearl Square on Friday in Bahrain's capital.

Many Arab governments including monarchies in these oil-rich but desperately poor states are now calculating whether to engage the opposition in an effort to bring economic and political reform to the region, or whether to hold onto power with all the desperation and violence that has marked the upending of Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s regime in Libya. The country continued descending into chaos as opposition forces, now well-organized, have armed themselves, taken much of eastern Libya, and are marching on the capital Tripoli, where Qaddafi has hired hundreds of mercenaries from nearby Chad and other countries to do much of his fighting. The scene in Libya is sure to get more bloody as the opposition works to unseat the Libyan dictator, who has come under international condemnation for using tanks and planes to kill hundreds of his own people.

In Bahrain, where an earlier crackdown by government forces cleared Pearl Square in that countries capital city Manama, and led to the deaths of dozens of protesters, there is a renewed effort by the country’s Shiite majority to push the Sunni minority out of power. Thousands of protesters throng in Pearl Square, setting up camps, staging demonstrations, and calling for the removal of the country’s long-entrenched monarchy.

In Iraq, America’s difficult democratic experiment is now suffering from “shock and awe” as thousands of protesters there poured into the streets demanding more reform, an end to corruption, and a withdrawal of U.S. military presence. Despite calls by the government for people not to take to the streets, and a security ban on vehicles in the streets, thousands of people are protesting in Iraq’s major cities, and there is information coming in that government troops and police have fired on crowds, killing some protesters.

By Editor