Middle East Focus: Arab Uprisings: the Mixed Scorecard......

Arabia Deserta

Arab Uprisings: the Mixed Scorecard......

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF

Scorecard for the Arab Revolutions, Rebellions, Uprisings, Foreign Plots, etc:

Arab uprisings, revolutions, rebellions, al-Qaeda plots (Yemen, Libya), Iranian mullah or Hezbollah plots (Bahrain, Egypt), Zionist plots (wherever convenient), hootnannies, whatever you want to call them. So far:

Two semi-successes (Tunisia and Egypt): fully domestic uprising without foreign help (although the Saudi king claimed in February that the protesters were foreign infiltrators). The jury is still out on how these will turn out. The military are the strongest group in at least one country, and the forces of Arab counterrevolution are furiously courting them with money and flower and chocolate (nothing about champagne here, not during Ramadan), especially in Egypt.
One near success (Libya: heavy foreign help for the rebels): the Nato bombardment and satellite intelligence, plus Nato 'Special Forces' helping, very likely leading the rebels, have ejected the dictator from his compound. But where is Mu'ammar el-Qaddafi? Look for a break up of the NTC and a resumption of tribal and ethnic and ideological rivalry. Hopefully there will be no Salafi terrorist bombers from the neighboring countries of the kind Iraq is facing. Hopefully no "more" foreign boots on the ground in Libya, not even the UAE mercenary force composed of Blackwater and Colombians and Australians and 'white' South Africans, and...)
Two that are stalled (Bahrain and Yemen: both have had heavy foreign help for the regimes). The causes of the uprising remain unchanged in these two countries. In Bahrain, the ruling oligarchy is again promising reforms, democracy, human rights, and a veritable paradise of tribal and sectarian paradise. Presumably under a revamped Apartheid system. It will not work: the people will rise again and again until the rulers fulfill their promises to the people. Meanwhile foreign forces remain and the Bahrain regime is furiously recruiting foreign mercenaries from places like Pakistan and Jordan (I will have to write again abut Jordanian humor or lack of sometime soon). The potentates and their retainers and minions (also called the elites) will probably see their businesses boycotted and decline. As for Yemen, it is a mess as well with the dictator and his clan clinging to power in San'a (probably not anywhere else outside a couple of large cities). Just as the Bahrain potentates tried to dismiss the uprising as an Iranian plot 35 years in the making to take over the world, the Yemen dictatorship has blamed al-Qaeda, Iranian mullahs, possibly drugs (but not qat), among others.
One that can go either way: Syria. The al-Assad Ba'ath regime, probably led in the background by old Assad loyalists, is putting out brush fires in various cities. It has not succeeded so far, although the sizes of the protests are reportedly smaller these days. Maybe they are waiting for the final outcome in Libya. Whatever happens in Damascus, the writing is on the wall: the era of Arab dynastic dictatorship is over. The people of Syria have lost their fear. Just like the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain.
Now to the one place where the fear still exists and Western powers speak in hushed near-reverent tones, if they speak at all: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. No only is there fear there, but the fear has apparently spread to Western capitals as well. More on that later.
Britain and France: sorry, I got carries away here. These are not Arab countries.