A map of the Sahel region showing where Al Qaeda operates (AFP/Graphic)
Posted on 12/24/2011 8:51:21 AM PST by SunkenCiv
It all began with a slap and a slur hurled at a poor vegetable seller by a policewoman in a provincial Tunisian city. Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in a protest that ignited a chain of fires across the Arab world. Twelve months after his death, he would scarcely recognise the region he knew.
From the Atlantic coast to the shores of the Gulf, popular uprisings against entrenched autocrats swept the region, unleashing long pent-up yearning for change in a world that democracy had passed by.
The balance sheet so far seemed inconceivable as 2011 got under way: four dictators gone, in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen; another under siege in Syria; and nearly every other Arab leader feeling tremors under his throne.
A new Middle East order is messily beginning to emerge, captured dramatically in images scarcely imaginable a year ago.
The revolutions have emboldened people across the region, impelled by a melange of sectarian, religious, ethnic, political and economic grievances but united in their demand for dignity, to rise up against decades of repression by autocratic leaders.
Ironically, the Arab despots unseated in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen are being replaced through the ballot box by Islamists they sought throughout their rule to crush.
The darker side to this still unfolding tale is the way historically-embedded sectarian hostilities -- ostensibly suppressed by decades of pan-Arab nationalist ideology -- were and are being stoked, leaving swathes of the region polarised between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
A map of the Sahel region showing where Al Qaeda operates (AFP/Graphic)
The so called Arab Awakening is nothing more then a shift of despots. The more secular despots that kept the lid on radicalized Islam are being replaced by despots more attuned to the agenda of the bomb throwers. It is hard to see why the West does not see this. It is impossible that the current U.S. administration doesn’t see it - maybe because it fits so well with their plan for a transformed world and America’s place in it.
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