Home >> Middle East >> Arab World

     Email   Print 

Middle East: Tough road ahead

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 4/1/2011

The collapse of Soviet – style Communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union itself in 1991 freed numerous countries of East Europe, the former Republics of the Soviet Union and the Baltic states. Likewise, today, after the termination of the corrupt regime in Tunisia, then in Egypt, by citizens, united by social media, who refused to be intimidated by violence and who insisted on the right to participate in their own political future the ripples of changes are spreading in the Middle East- a region that encompasses North Africa and Western Asia.

No one knows in the near future how many more regimes would fall. The days of Gadaffi regime in Libya are numbered and there is revolt going on in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen. For Egypt, now comes the hard part. More than 80 million Egyptian has to alter their ideologies and change their lives. They had lived 30 yrs under totalitarian regime of Hosni Mubarak.

The neglected infrastructures have to be rebuilt. A new government will soon discover that the job of rebuilding and creating economic opportunities could not be done in few years. This will take many years or an entire generation. Some cynics have presaged that it is not democracy that comes next in Egypt. The fear of fundamentalism lurks in. According to this school of thought Islamic militants will control the new regime, making the future of Egypt more uncertain. The example they point to is the Iranian revolution in 1979.

We don't know what comes next but let us hope for the best. The uncertainty and menace posed by organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood are grave. Nonetheless democracy is on the way in Egypt. We will have to see what unfolds over the next few years. Meanwhile in Libya, Gadaffi is fighting a losing battle pretending to win. His days are numbered. Hence, the risk of a major power vacuum looms large in Libya. Conflict and violence could linger on given the long history of antagonism between the Libya’s tribes.



President Obama in an evening speech to the nation in a televised address said that the military operations in Libya have succeeded in averting a humanitarian catastrophe. “We have stopped Gaddafi’s deadly advance,” Obama said. “While our military mission is narrowly focused on saving lives, we continue to pursue the broader goal of a Libya that belongs not to a dictator, but to its people,” Obama was quoted as saying by the Bloomberg..

Libya’s neighboring countries are scrutinizing the domestic developments in Libya closely. Tunisia and Egypt doesn’t want a destabilized Libya as they are going through their own transition phase. Europe is also watching the events in Libya without blinking its eyes. Media reports suggest that there are rising fears in European states along the northern shores of the Mediterranean of a flood of migrants and asylum-seekers fleeing the violence.

The Gaddafi regime is seemingly on its last legs in Libya as the regime is breaking internally; questions are inevitably being raised about what comes next. Gaddafi regime may crumble very soon, but the blistering political climate around the region shows no signs of descending.