BAGHDAD — Moments after Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ejected from his palace, tweets began flying across a region that was at once enthralled and appalled by the specter of an Arab leader being overthrown by his people.
“Today Ben Ali, tomorrow Hosni Mubarak,” gloated one tweeter, referring to Egypt’s long-serving president. “Come on Mubarak, take a hint and follow the lead,” urged another.
And prominent Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy observed, “Revolutions are like dominos.”
On Saturday, a day after Tunisia’s president was forced into exile by massive street demonstrations, the Middle East was still reeling, with calls for copycat protests reverberating across the Internet, in cafes and on street corners as far afield as Jordan and Yemen.
For the first time in the history of a part of the world long calcified by autocratic rule, a dictator had been forced from office by a popular revolt, and it was broadcast live on television.
Leaders braced for the fallout. Elites analyzed the potential for the revolution to spread. Ordinary people celebrated, marveled, gossiped and wondered: Will it happen here? What can we do? And, perhaps most important, who will be next?
Only one certainty stood out: The turmoil in tiny Tunisia, long ignored as a sleepy outpost of relative stability on the fringe of a volatile region, will have profound ramifications for the rest of the Arab world.
“Things will not be the same any longer,” said Labib Kamhawi, a political analyst in the Jordanian capital of Amman. “2011 will witness drastic change, and it is long overdue.”
The rumblings already are there. Jordan, Algeria and Libya have all seen violent protests in recent weeks, spurred by rising prices, unemployment and anger at official corruption — much the same issues that precipitated the snowballing street protests in Tunisia a month ago.
With the exception of Lebanon, whose democratically elected government also collapsed last week, for reasons related to Lebanon’s own complicated sectarian politics, and Iraq, still battling the scourge of a lingering insurgency, every country in the region is ruled by some form of undemocratic autocrat.
“We could go through the list of Arab leaders looking in the mirror right now and very few would not be on the list,” said Robert Malley, who heads the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group.
Perhaps nowhere do the lessons of Tunisia resonate more loudly than in nearby Egypt, where Mubarak has been president since 1981, six years longer than his toppled Tunisian counterpart. Egypt, like Tunisia, is grappling with the challenges of a rapidly growing population, limited job opportunities and deep resentment of the entrenched privileges of a ruling clique.
In a possible foreshadowing of what might lie ahead, police broke up an attempted demonstration Saturday night outside the Tunisian Embassy in Cairo and blocked all but a few dozen protesters from reaching the site of another planned protest.
But it is far from certain that what happened in Tunisia will be replicated in other parts of a region whose governments have a practiced record of suppressing dissent.
Latest developments
Change of power: Interim President Fouad Mebazaa, leader of Tunisia’s lower house of parliament, was sworn in Saturday — the second change of power in 24 hours. Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi had stepped in briefly with a vague assumption of power. But the head of the Constitutional Council declared President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s departure permanent and gave Mebazaa 60 days to organize new elections.
Rioting: Sporadic gunfire echoed around the capital of Tunis, and looters were out in force. Black smoke billowed over a giant supermarket in Ariana, north of the capital, as it was torched and emptied. Residents of some Tunis neighborhoods set up barricades and organized overnight patrols to deter rioters.
Prison problems: A fire at a prison in the coastal resort of Monastir killed 42 people. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. The director of another prison in Mahdia, further down the coast, let 1,000 inmates flee after soldiers shot five dead amid a rebellion. The purpose was to avoid further bloodshed.
Air space: Tunisian airspace reopened Saturday, but some flights were canceled and others left with delays. Thousands of tourists were still being evacuated.
The Associated Press
