Hope of Democracy in the Arab World.

The dramatic events in Tunisia and Egypt over the past fortnight has raised the question "Could these events have an effect all across the Arab world?".
There have been popular revolutions in the Arab world in the past , but in the end, all of them have led to lasting dictatorships ,never to vibrant democracies.
Its still too soon to tell for Tunisia and Egypt, but there is hope for reform and democracy. We should see these events, not in isolation but as a part of a decade of change. There has been a pattern emerging over the past decade. A decade ago, the political landscape in the Arab world was bleak, but today,there are sprouts of democracy breaking out all over.Lets have a look:

Iraq - Although suffering from deep sectarianism, it has a somewhat functional democratically elected multi-party government and a vibrant free press,both electronic and print.Infact, Iraq today is the biggest functioning democracy in the Middle East.

Iran had a contested election and a genuine mass protest movement.The 2009 green revolution would have been unimaginable a few years earlier.

Lebanon has faltered of late with its government collapsing but Syria's direct control of that country has ended and we now can hope for a more open , although messy, political system, one in which Hezbollah has a key role to play.

Countries like Bahrain and Kuwait have flirted with reforms and who knows what might happen in Algeria and Syria in the next 10 years.

This sort of striving for democracy , is what Arab intellectuals have yearned for, speaking of the freedom deficit in their lands ,which is quite true.

And ofcourse a certain former POTUS in TEXAS, who goes by the name of George W.Bush, must have a smile on his face today . Afterall, he set forth to fix this problem,which he called,A FORWARD STRATEGY OF FREEDOM IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

Now whether these events are BECAUSE OF America's military PRESSURE or DESPITE IT...now thats a different debate alltogether.

In Iran , the democracy movement happened due to a rigged election and a mass movement. In Lebanon,it was due to political assassination. In Tunisia, it was due to the MIDDLE CLASS which had had enough of a dictator enriching himself while they suffered. In EGYPT it is a burgeoning middle class which doesn't want the keys to a kingdom handed down to a dynasty or the armY.

DEMOCRACY COMES OUT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIETY,ECONOMIC GROWTH AND MIDDLE-CLASS RESTLESSNESS AND ABOVE ALL, THE POLITICAL FAILURES OF DICTATORS. IT CAN BE HELPED FROM ABROAD, BUT ULTIMATELY IT IS AN ORGANIC PROCESS WHEN IT IS SUCCESSFUL. But lets give former POTUS George W.Bush his due. He saw the problem and he believed that Arabs were not genetically incapable of democracy and he put America's moral might behind the great cause of Arab reform. That effort now seems to be reaping some favourable results.