Less than a month after the world watched Tunisia celebrate the collapse of the country’s strong-arm ruler, the scenes in central Cairo on Friday offered an even more potent display of the new-found power of the Arab street: fist-pumping crowds cheering the end of President Hosni Mubarak.
The downfall of Mubarak — one of the mainstays of Middle East politics and Western policies in the region for nearly three decades — marks another history-shaping moment for the Arab world from a country seen by many as its political and cultural crucible.
What began as a tentative cry against an entrenched regime in late January grew into a popular mutiny that forced Mubarak to flee Cairo and then step down in just a few dizzying hours.
But the revolution on the Nile raises deep questions about the long-term stability of other Western-allied regimes across the region.
There is no guarantee that the reform wave will wash over another country soon. In Algeria, protests have resumed after a short lull but so far seem to be under control. An attempt to stir Egypt-inspired protests in Syria earlier this month was snuffed out by security forces.
The reverberations, however, are already being felt in smaller but significant ways. In Saudi Arabia a group of opposition activists said they asked the nation’s king for the right to form a political party in a rare challenge to the absolute power of the ruling dynasty.
Jordan’s new prime minister, Marouf Bakhit, promised to continue political reforms demanded by protesters who forced King Abdullah II to reshuffle the cabinet. Last week, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh bowed to pressure from protesters and announced he would not seek re-election in 2013 and would not try to pass power to his son.
They could hit next in the strategic Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, where opposition groups are calling for street rallies. Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet and is the most politically divided in the Gulf. Majority Shiites have long alleged they face second-class status under the Sunni rulers. Last summer, the nation was torn by clashes and riots after a wave of arrests of perceived Shiite dissidents.
On Friday — just hours before Mubarak stepped down — Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa granted each Bahraini family the equivalent of nearly $2,700 in an apparent bid to calm tensions.
Kuwait, the other Gulf nation with serious political opposition, outlawed any “gatherings, rallies or marches” after Friday prayers, said a report on the state news agency KUNA.
But even Iran’s main Middle East ally, Syria, has been showing some concessions to the reformist fervour. This week, Facebook and YouTube were available for the first time in three years, amid signs Damascus may be lifting its ban on the popular social networking websites that have helped energise and organise protests.