While it is hard to take eyes off Egypt, the rest of the Arab world is simmering. We should make sure nothing boils over while we aren’t watching:
- Syria: “days of rage” demonstrations called for Friday and Saturday. One wag has proposed calling them “days of mild frustration” and President Bashar al Asad has claimed he is in favor of “opening.” My month studying Arabic in Damascus two years ago suggested to me that the population, while more than mildly frustrated, lacks the stomach for anything like what is going on in Cairo. Bashar knows that. Feb 5 update: the days of rage failed.
- Jordan: Ditto Amman, where weekly protests haven’t grown very large and the government is busy increasing food and fuel subsidies and civil service salaries, despite budget problems. The King sacked the Prime Minister this week, but that won’t change much.
- Algeria: President Bouteflika has promised to lift the state of emergency “soon.” Next, planned and banned rally scheduled for February 12, focused on economic and social issues, not politics. Anyway that’s a political year away at this point.
- Libya: Quiet. Qadhafi looked frightened when Tunisia happened, but I guess oil income that makes GDP well over $12,300 per capita provides a lot of simmering time.
- Sudan: scattered, small protests, but the big news in Khartoum is the loss of the relatively Western-oriented, sometimes English-speaking and Christian South. That will shift the center of gravity in Khartoum sharply in the Islamist direction.
- Yemen: demonstrations and a president who promises not to run again in 2013, but this is at least the third time Saleh has made that promise. Revolution is tough to organize when a good part of the population chews qat, but keep an eye on the southern rebellion (the northern one has gone quiescent).
So to my eye nothing else seems ready to boil over yet, but the outcome in Cairo could well heat things up, especially in Syria. Bashar al Assad gives a great interview to the Wall Street Journal, but I doubt he is quite as in tune with his people as he claims.
PS: I really should not have skipped Saudi Arabia, which was treated in a fine NPR piece by Michelle Norris yesterday. No demos, but a lot of people watching and wondering, sometimes out loud.