Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF

“Come….. Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’…….” Bob Dylan (Happy Birthday)
 
On Bob Dylan’s birthday, it is appropriate to put some of the lyrics of his song that is most relevant to the current changing times in our region. Robert Allen Zimmerman, potentially almost a good Muslim name in this ugly age of religious and sectarian strife. He said “Please heed the call” and two Arab despots have already been forced to heed the call of revolution: Mubarak and Bin Ali. Tunisia and Egypt have gone some way in their revolutions, but they still face danger and counterrevolution. Two others, Saleh of Yemen and Qaddafi of Libya seem to be on their way out, but it will take time. Assad of Syria is a mystery: it seems that the opposition is not united in any meaningful way and their public protests are disorganized compared to the others. The Far Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, and Mauretania) apparently will rise on their own schedule.
Which brings us to the toughest nut to crack: the Gulf, my Gulf. There have been protests in Oman, protests in eastern Saudi Arabia, and arrests of academics and journalists in the UAE. The real uprising has been in Bahrain: the people managed to defeat the security forces and foreign mercenaries of the ruling al-Khalifa clan on the street. They were on the verge of forcing their legitimate demands on the despots, before the al-Khalifa got outside help. Saudi tanks rolled into Bahrain (with some help from the UAE) and saved the despots, for now. The al-Saud have been the worst offenders in terms of not heeding the call: they have tried hard to abort and hijack the popular revolutions from Tunisia to the Gulf. The jury is out, but the writing is on the wall: the fear is gone from the Arab street. The fear is gone, and the times they are a-changin’ in the Middle East.
Cheers
mhg



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