A Kingdom of Libya flag is seen during a demonstration in support of the Bahraini people in Baghdad's Sadr city (Stringer Iraq/Courtesy Reuters)

Hi folks,

Below is an excerpt from my piece on TheAtlantic.com that appeared today. To read the full text, click here.

A couple of days before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was finally forced from office, it rained in Cairo. When the storm passed and the sun re-appeared, one of the protesters pointed out on Twitter that a rainbow had appeared over downtown — a sign, she believed, of the freedom and prosperity that was to come. Caught up in the romance of the barricades, it was hard for demonstrators and democracy activists, in Egypt and beyond, not to think that way. It seemed that Middle East was on the verge of a democratic breakthrough. It was one thing for Tunisians to force a tin-pot dictator like Zine Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Jeddah, it was quite another for Egyptians to dump the Pharaoh. That’s not supposed to happen. And as Tunisians inspired Egyptians, what the revolutionaries in Cairo accomplished gave impetus to Pearl Square, where Bahrain’s own protesters have gathered, and to Benghazi, the base of Libya’s rebellion against Muammar Qaddafi. Yet the successes of Tahrir or November 7 squares have not easily translated to these other places. It seems entirely possible that the Arab spring could end on the banks of the Nile. What went wrong?

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Tunisian army soldier stands in front of the headquarters of the Constitutional Democratic Rally party of ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali during a demonstration in Tunis on January 20, 2011 (Zohra Bensemra/Courtesy Reuters)

Hi folks,

Below is my article on Tunisia that is now up on Foreign Policy. Enjoy.

Aren’t Middle Eastern militaries supposed to crack down and kick butt? Aren’t they supposed to be the “backbone” of regimes? The guarantors of last resort? The ultimate instrument of political control? Read any account of civil-military relations and the Middle East — including my own — and the answers to these questions are a resounding yes. So when the Tunisian armed forces, allegedly at the command of General Rashid Ammar, told Tunisian President Zine Abidine Ben Ali that the military would not shoot protesters demanding the strongman’s ouster and then pushed him from power, the commanders were clearly not playing to type. The role that the military has played in the Tunisian uprising thus far is intriguing and as Tunisia grapples with phase two of the post-Ben Ali era, what the military does (and doesn’t do) will be critical in the country’s political trajectory.

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A man embraces a soldier as protesters walk past soldiers while shouting slogans during a demonstration against Tunisian President Ben Ali in Tunis (STR New/Courtesy Reuters)

Update: Hats off to those who saw the unraveling of Ben Ali’s regime coming.  The army moved in today and Ben Ali is no longer in control.  This is good, but only the first phase.  Best that I can tell from Washington, it seems that the military command has understood the demands from Tunisian society.  What they do now is crucial.  I know that the best way to support democracy is to support democracy, but in a way, the military’s intervention (and the way the officers intervened), may yet set the stage for a democratic Tunisia.

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